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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 10 Feb 1971

Vol. 251 No. 7

Private Members' Business. - Higher Education Authority Bill, 1970: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

It is always very difficult for me to follow Deputy FitzGerald. In fact, I sometimes think that Deputy FitzGerald has been invented as a private cross for me to carry as spokesman in the same area for the Labour Party. There are three reasons why it is particularly difficult: first, because his speeches are always so exhaustive, not to say exhausting; secondly, he and I have been talking about this sort of subject in one context or another for the last ten to 15 years and agree upon so many things; and, thirdly, because he tends invariably to pre-empt nearly all the logical points which can be made in a discussion on a measure of this kind dealing with higher education.

However, I think I can fairly say that there is a slight difference of emphasis between Deputy FitzGerald and myself in our approach to this Bill. I approach the problems of the Minister with, perhaps, a greater degree of sympathy than Deputy FitzGerald has always shown. I cannot help remembering that in discussing a measure of this kind we are dealing with what is in statistical terms an esoteric level of education, one which, for example, is extremely unlikely to be made available in the immediate future to the vast majority of the kind of constituent whom I represent. When, therefore, Deputy FitzGerald and, indeed, academics of all kinds speak of the correct fact that Governments never make available to them the level of financial endowment which they would wish, I, perhaps, speaking as a Labour member, feel more strongly than Deputy FitzGerald the realisation that the Minister's shopping bill every year is a very extensive one, one with very many claims upon it, and that the claims of the university or the tertiary institution is only one among many such claims. While it is an important one, it is, as I said, a claim that comes from a section of society which is scarcely representative of society as a whole.

I say that at the outset in order that any remarks I may make here about the shortcomings or virtues of this Bill can be kept in the correct perspective. It remains undeniably true that for the bulk of our people primary and, with some luck, secondary education or vocational education is the highest to which they can aspire. Therefore, those of us like Deputy Dr. FitzGerald and myself who are practising academics are in danger at times of forgetting this fact and of putting on the wrong hat at the wrong time. I can assure the Minister that this does not apply in my case and I am sympathetic to his difficulties in framing this and other measures that relate to university education.

I do not intend to carry my discussion of this measure into quite as broadranging a field as that into which my predecessor took it. Nevertheless, certain broad issues must be taken up before approaching the Bill in any detail. One which Deputy FitzGerald spoke of was university autonomy, that precious and indefinable substance behind which the academic retreats whenever his comfort appears in any way to be threatened by the realities of the outer world. University autonomy is one of these beautiful phrases usually associated with talk of the quality of the teaching, the maintenance of standards and, above all else, delivered in a manner which appears to settle any point of dispute in Newman's Idea of a University. I well remember the late Deputy Donogh O'Malley saying to me once during the very early period of the merger debates that if he heard anyone again standing up at a meeting and referring to Newman's Idea of a University he would scream. This is a very understandable attitude.

Academics are notoriously conservative. I do not think the Minister can be blamed—although he was not exclusively blamed by Deputy FitzGerald, but I do not think he can be blamed even to the extent to which Deputy FitzGerald blames him—for his failure to shift the academic community into the 20th century. Personally I have the utmost sympathy for anyone who endeavours to take on the academic establishment, more particularly if he is not an academic himself. By that I do not intend to suggest for a moment that somebody who is not an academic is in any way unqualified to act as Minister for Education. All I am saying is that a period of personal, face-to-face knowledge of the degree of blood-letting, convolution and mutual bickering which goes on in the academic world is an asset when it comes to endeavouring to discern the reality that lies behind some of these resounding phrases. My own personal experience would suggest you would have to go as far as the Roman Curia to find a body of men as conservative as the average academic.

Talk of autonomy must be seen in the context of the social responsibilities of our universities. There are forms of university autonomy which I would defend to the death, and I shall have something to say about that in the context of this Bill. However, the concept of autonomy has to be taken in the context of the fact that it is ulimately the taxpayer who is the fount of the existence of the contemporary university.

All the universities today depend on the taxpayers, the great majority of whom have no opportunity of entering the institutions which they finance unwillingly, and I think we should remember that. It is a point to place on record even at this time, that even my own college, Trinity College, Dublin, is now almost entirely dependent upon State grants. The widelyheld illusion that it has vast funds of a private kind dating back to the Reformation or something like that, I regret to say, is not the case. The depreciation in the value of money, the growing cost and size of education has rendered my own college as dependent upon the community as any other institution.

Therefore, in approaching a Bill like this we should be wary of the academic motor reaction of falling into a sort of hysterical suspicion of the Minister and of the Department of Education. As far as I am concerned, in introducing this Bill the Minister, whether he be a Minister of a Fianna Fáil Government or any other Government is the spokesman of the community to whom these institutions ultimately owe their existence and their loyalty, and he is entitled to precisely the degree of respect which attends upon his office. As a dissident lay Catholic once said to me: "One may dislike the Pope but one should not abuse the Papacy." The same is true of the Minister for Education. That respect has been sadly lacking amongst academics, a group of whom I once heard refer to the late Deputy O'Malley in this way: "and him not even a university man", which of course was not true.

The university academics concept of autonomy is an interesting one. It is, as Deputy FitzGerald hinted, an ideal situation in which he would approach the Minister for Education or the Authority with a bill and, standing smartly to attention and touching his forelock, the Minister for Education would supply the moneys requisite to meet the bill and would not direct the smallest inquiry as to the manner in which they were dispensed. Reading even the critique of the present Bill produced by the Irish Federation of University Teachers, an organisation of which I have the honour to be a founder member and was for many years secretary, I could not help feeling that their view of the Bill was that in an ideal world the Higher Education Authority would be totally autonomous vis-à-vis the Minister and the universities would be totally autonomous vis-à-vis the Higher Education Authority. It seems to me mildly impracticable, to indulge in something of an understatement.

At the same time, to balance this slightly—I hope I have made my sympathies clear to the Minister—the fact does remain that here statutory recognition is being given to a body which must possess a measure of dignity and independence if its recommendations are to carry weight and if it is to be other than simply a clearing house for ministerial directives. When this body was first set up the gentlemen, some academics and some not, who accepted membership of it, I think I am correct in saying on an ad hoc basis, were subjected to a considerable amount of criticism by some of what I might describe as their more reactionary colleagues. It was argued that it had the effect of taking something like the king's shilling. Their position was not rendered any more envious by the impression created by the then Minister that their function was to implement in detail broad policies which had been agreed upon already in principle. I think he used the immortal phase, “What has been decided has been decided.” Oh, that that were so in the case of the university merger. However, it is not. Certainly that statement did nothing to enhance the status of the Higher Education Authority.

Furthermore, in the Estimate for Education last April the Minister dealt what I can only describe as a very calculated rebuff to the expertise of the very institution that he had established. I quote from the Official Report, Volume 245, column 1320:

Members will recollect that the Higher Education Authority in a recent report estimated that £24 million would be needed to meet the capital requirements of the universities in the coming six years. This Estimate and the accommodation planned in relation to it has been very carefully examined by the special building unit in my Department. This has been done in a very thorough fashion having regard to the most up-to-date building techniques and costs based thereon. I am fully satisfied that accommodation of the magnitude proposed by the Higher Education Authority can be provided at a cost not exceeding £15 million. The intention of the Government to provide funds on this basis has been notified to the Authority.

With respect, that is a very peremptory dismissal of the expertise of a body which the Minister had himself set up. It would have been better to say "You want £24 million, but I have not got it. All you are going to get is £15 million", rather than saying to them, "you have done your sums so badly that my building unit can do the same sums and come up with an answer which is £9 million less". That seems to suggest they are mentally defective. The Higher Education Authority were put in an embarrassing situation at the outset. I should hate to think that the idea of having a Higher Education Authority with real motive power and dynamic would be turned into a sort of repository where unwelcome ideas could be dumped and where difficult questions about the merger could be dealt with by saying, "Ah well, the Higher Education Authority is talking about it." When the Higher Education Authority makes its mind up it is told by the Government it is an ass, that no notice will be taken of it. I do not know whether the Minister has ever read David Copperfield but if he has he may remember in that novel there was a legal firm called Spenlow and Jorkens and Mr. Spenlow always took the view when approached by one of his clients for any concession that he would be delighted to concede it but that Mr. Jorkens would not permit this. Mr. Jorkens was an invisible character who turned out to be one of the most inoffensive of men. I hope the Minister does not intend to play battledoor and shuttlecock with the Higher Education Authority in this way too, utilising it to express the wishes of his Department when these are appropriate and at other times ignoring it. This would be very unfortunate and I hope he will not allow this to be done.

I do not ask that universities should be granted that degree of autonomy which permits them to spend in any fashion they like and educate in any fashion they like irrespective of the manpower needs or the social aspirations of the people, nor do I suggest, and here I differ from Deputy FitzGerald, that any Minister of State who sits in that chair over there, with the dignity attendant upon the fact that the people have voted him there, can be expected to bring into existence a small body of men who are totally independent to administer so vast a section of the country's welfare, irrespective of Government decree. The answer lies somewhere in between. I hope he will permit the Higher Education Authority a degree of autonomy which will allow men to assume membership of it with dignity and make a constructive contribution to education as the Bill seems to suggest it wishes they would.

Much has been said about section 12 of the Bill and the Minister has expressed his readiness to amend that section on the Committee Stage. I welcome this readiness on his part and I hope his amendment will be appropriate. The most dangerous implication of that section is the possibility that grants for university institutions should be earmarked. Deputy FitzGerald and I have argued this point out with the Higher Education Authority in different contexts and like Deputy FitzGerald I fully appreciate the necessity to earmark capital grants. It is patently absurd that a university should be given £½ million for a third or fourth generation computer and spend it on the most sophisticated school of Greek on these islands. Obviously we cannot have that. It would, however, be dangerous if areas of teaching which have established academic excellence in universities were to be phased up or phased down at the whim of the person who dispensed the money.

As I have said, academics are conservative people by nature. When I was attempting to conduct an analytical study of the possible rationalisation of departments between the two Dublin colleges in the context of the Irish Federation of University Teachers I found, and I think Deputy FitzGerald found the same thing, that the most pristine academic arguments could be produced satisfactorily and triumphantly to establish the absolute necessity for retaining everything that was being taught on either campus in precisely the form in which it was being taught, if not better and more expensively. Obviously this cannot be permitted to continue.

Fashions in teaching change and sometimes the academic in his otiose bumbling way may be clinging to a truth which is worth preserving and the relative wastage of public money in permitting him to continue to teach subjects which do not have an obvious instant technological feed back for the community, may be justified in the long term gains for the community. For example, at the moment technology is all the rage. I am not saying that is wrong but as a university man I consider the problems of Kevin Street and Bolton Street in terms of space and equipment are far worse than any that exist in our universities and must have a far higher claim on the Minister's attention. We are all going technology mad. The Americans started it and then Harold Wilson took it up and made it a big thing and just as they are stepping away from it we are picking it up and married to this are dangerous signs that education is solely the servant of the manpower needs of the community. In those circumstances it might seem appropriate to go down to one of our universities or colleges and say, "Stop teaching Latin altogether, stop teaching Greek, turn out a quarter as many doctors as you are turning out at the moment, do not turn out any lawyers for ten years or more, but give us 500 electronic engineers by 1975."

That would be highly dangerous because fashions change and what has been destroyed cannot be built up again. I do not know if it would be legislatively possible to build that into the section. I do not think it is. I should like an assurance from the Minister that it is not intended that the current expenditure of existing departments in universities should be tinkered with in this way, first, because it would be a bad thing academically and secondly because, as the Minister and the Department very well know, this will mean that the HEA to some extent, and the departments still more, will become a battlefield over which the conflicting claims of academics will rage with a sort of incestuous fervour which will redound to the benefit of everything except education. I would heartily advise him not to do that.

On the subject of the chairmanship I should also like a little bit of illumination. I infer from the Bill that the chairman will, of course, be a fulltime official. I am not completely clear from the Bill—and again Deputy FitzGerald touched on this point— whether he will be a civil servant who is seconded for this purpose, and what kind of person he will be. I should like to join with Deputy FitzGerald in praising the present Chairman of the Higher Education Authority. There are qualities in Dr. Ó Raifeartaigh which equip him superbly for that post. He is a man of enormous administrative experience, a man with a genuine interest in and a deep knowledge of both the practice and the philosophy of education and a man of wide culture. There was a most happy coincidence in his becoming available, if one might so put it, at precisely that moment. There is no guarantee that a similar person will become available in the future.

I would tend to the view that the chairman should be elected or appointed by the HEA with, perhaps, a power of ratification in the Minister's hands. I am not for a moment casting any aspersions upon the present chairman or any foreseeable one in the immediate future, but there is enough "hole and cornery" in this country without leaving so central an appointment in ministerial hands. This will be a better system.

I, too, am a little unhappy about the designation of other institutions as being of higher educational status. This is referred to in section 1 (c). I ask the question at once, by whom? The answer is, of course, the Minister. What institutions? There are institutions, as Deputy FitzGerald said, like the Royal College of Surgeons which would seem instantly to qualify but there are other institutions which fall into more shadowy ground. This power would be better left to the authority itself. There is a dangerous tendency again creeping into educational fashion in Western Europe, that is, that you create a university by calling it one, by calling something that exists a university. I do not think this is correct.

I am as anxious as anyone else to break down the distinction of status between the technological institute on the one side and the university on the other. It is often a very unreal distinction. This is a much deeper problem than simply designation by a Minister, a sort of act of knighting by which this thing becomes elevated to a university. The whole question of improvement of facilities in the context of such an institution arises. It is obviously an enormous subject and if I may, in a moment of self-parody, define the problem which faces the Minister, it is, I think, whether at the tertiary level the binary system should continue, which is the kind of gobbledygook, I am afraid, that people like academics tend to use when they are pretending to be helpful to Ministers for Education. There is a slight danger here and I share some of the fears of the academics.

Reference was made also to the supervision of the overall provision of student places. I wonder if the Minister would illuminate this a little further when he is replying? Is it intended that the Higher Education Authority can set a ceiling on an individual college? For example can it say to UCD: "You are too big. Get smaller." Or to Trinity College: "You are too small. Get bigger." I do not know. This type of action would be very bitterly resisted by the academics. Obviously some sort of agreed pattern of development and size must be attained. I wonder what is the best way to do it. I think it had better be done by consultation. Certainly, a policy of the inflation of the Dublin complex is highly undesirable and there have been signs for many years that this is what is happening. Oddly enough, speaking as a member of a Dublin college, my fears here would be for the colleges in Cork and Galway. I hope we can rest assured that the Minister is thinking of them when he speaks in this way.

This is a point I intended to bring up in the context of the earmarking of grants even on the issue of capital equipment. I wonder how it is intended that the provision of money for costly equipment will be determined in the future once this body is statutorily in existence. Will the buck stop ultimately on the desk of the Secretary of the Department of Education? Will it stop at the desk of the Higher Education Authority? If for example TCD and UCD come to the Minister looking for an identical computer at the same point in time, both of them will not get it, and quite right too.

This, of course, is the very issue which the universities in their insensate blindness, in my opinion, on 6th July, 1968, refused to face by refusing to have anything to do with the merger. Here, sans merger we are left in a situation where I am not quite clear what will happen about the provision of this sort of costly capital equipment or, indeed, the provision of buildings in the permanent competition that takes place for capital grants for buildings. I can think of instances but it would be invidious to mention them. I might seem to be falling into my other function.

In the absence of a merger solution there will be a battlefield somewhere and I wonder where it will be. If there is to be an ultimate power of appeal in financial matters to the Minister, the Authority will inevitably be downgraded and lose status. I want to put this as courteously as I can about some of my colleagues. Any really good university politician or operator will know where the buck stops, and that is where he will go to look for his grant. If it is not the HEA he will cock a snook at the HEA and by-pass it. He will take the Minister out to lunch or something like that. In those circumstances the HEA will become a pretty ludicrous institution. This worries me.

Section 8 (2) of the Bill provides:

Requests submitted under this section shall be examined by An tÚdaras annually or at such other intervals as it may determine.

I hope it will do its best to encourage a system by which three or five year university budgeting is encouraged rather than annual budgeting which I do not think has proved to be a very satisfactory way of planning the long-term development of universities.

There are a number of small points which do not bear directly upon the Bill. At the outset let me ask the Minister—I think this is relevant and I have addressed a question to him on this subject—where does all this leave the university merger? Here we have an education authority which is set up to co-ordinate and look after the interests of a number of teaching institutions. These teaching institutions are antiquated in their structure and static, on the whole, in their attitudes to educational development. They have passed through a seething turmoil in which by the strangest series of alliances all sorts of odd bods have got together to thwart the Minister and his predecessor about the merger, all sorts of people with no ground in common.

In all this the one thing that has been lost sight of is educational necessity, educational desirability. When the dust has settled, if it has settled about the merger, we are left with institutions unchanged except that they can now perhaps celebrate the famous victory of preserving themselves in their previous mothball condition. I do not think this makes the task of the HEA any easier because a great unanswered question mark still hangs over the shape of the institutions which it is supposed to bring together in harmonious development. I am, of course, an unrepentant supporter of the merger plan. I thought there were many good things in that 6th July statement of 1968 and I do not cast the same blame upon the Minister's predecessor for failing to deal with the academics as Deputy FitzGerald has cast. It is totally impossible to get agreement from any body of academics and I think the late Deputy O'Malley appreciated that the only way to get an academic to do what one wants him to do is to make up one's mind and consult him afterwards. They cried for consultation throughout that whole period and when they got it all they did was to reject every possible alternative put before them.

This leaves us with a whole lot of unanswered questions which this unfortunate Authority will have to deal with—the rationalisation of existing facilities, for example. The community simply cannot stand the expense of maintaining parallel facilities in the more expensive fields of teaching. The present question mark which hangs over medical teaching is an example of this. The community can perhaps bear the cost of having duplicated teachers of classics, history or political science, the so-called blackboard and chalk subjects, because they are cheap. Even if they are inessential they can be permitted to continue because they are cheap. This is not true in the case of the dearer subjects. I hope this concept of rationalisation about which much wind has been generated by the academic staff association which has never been explained to me will not be left to the universities in Dublin in particular to determine. I hope the Minister will appreciate that if he brings to the attention of these universities that they are, within the limits of genuine academic freedom, the servants of the community and that it is his function to knock their heads together, he has the sympathy of the people on these benches. It would be a very sorry state of affairs if university education, which is so often the hard won prize for sacrifice in a family for a working class child, if the needs and orientation of this tertiary level of education, should be left to log-rolling bargains between institutions. I hope we will find that that is not the case, that the HEA will, in fact, have teeth if not to implement the merger, which I still hope defiantly that it will, at least to test the sincerity of the academics about their apparent desire to avoid expensive duplication.

One specific way in which a major reform has been delayed by this permanent merger thing is the review of the governing body structures of all the Irish colleges and an attempt to achieve their uniformity. My own college, by a paradox which is typical of its history, possesses a governing structure which is superficially undemocratic but in practice, I think it is fair to say, proves highly democratic. I do not think the same can be said of the constituent colleges of the National University. In a situation where not merely student opinion is not adequately heard on these bodies but junior staff opinion is excluded and where a shadow of insecurity hangs over non-statutory lecturers and professors approaching retirement age who know that the extension of their jobs for a further five years depends on the goodwill of persons of authority, this sort of thing should be remedied quickly before we have a repetition of the case which the then Justice Kenny took. I see no reason why this knot should not be cut quickly. I would ask the Minister to ask the HEA to make up its mind one way or another about the merger quickly and then to expedite the review of the structure of the governing bodies of all the Irish colleges, including my own.

I welcome the statement of the Minister that one of the subjects which the authority will look to is the common grading of levels of university staff. Ridiculous anomalies have existed here for many years with assistants and junior lecturers in my college, assistants, assistant lecturers, non-statutory lecturers and so on in the other colleges. The sooner some order and logic is brought into this and justice is seen to be done the better. I am also glad that he has referred to the fact that the authority will have as part of its function, the examining of common methods of appointment to university staff. Again it would be invidious to go into specific cases but I can think of one case which has occurred within the last 12 months which, to my mind, cast serious doubt on the method of appointment in one college at any rate. The sooner all these appointments are filled in the same way with public advertisement and with, in the case of senior posts, external assessment by qualified people, the better.

I do not share Deputy FitzGerald's enthusiasm for the projected council of universities. It has always seemed to me that a council of universities would inevitably prove to be a large, unworkable body of estimable men— dons, clerics, county councillors and such like people—who would travel long distances at 1s 6d per mile at three-monthly intervals and exchange platitudes and return to their places of origin. I do not think a body of that kind could ever be anything else. I do think the Minister should clear the air as to whether this council of universities will be founded or not.

I am a little bit unhappy about the provision in section 6 (1) of the Schedule to the Bill that the Government may remove an ordinary member of the authority from office at any time. However, I am not experienced in these things and perhaps this is normal procedure. The Minister might be prepared to comment. Certainly, some member of his party have made statements about academics by name which would not tend to leave me with the feeling that an excessively independent-minded member of the authority would be immune from jealous attention.

I endorse Deputy FitzGerald's suggestion that there should be students on the Higher Education Authority though not six as requested by the USI which I think is unrealistic. Two or three would be a logical number. I notice the Minister did not tend to fill up the full complement of places on the authority in the first instance. I wonder if, perhaps, he had something like this in mind for a future stage. I hope he had.

One subject which could very well be referred to this body in the very near future is this issue of evening students which is so pressing at the moment. This is surely the sort of thing it ought to be talking about. I shall not develop that point.

Deputy FitzGerald and indeed the Irish Federation of University Teachers' memorandum made much play about the maintenance of standards in universities. I am a little sceptical about this. Just as I say the university academics idea of Heaven is an autonomous university, so also a university teacher's idea of proper standards in a university would be a staff-student ratio of one to one and lengthy vacations during which he could refresh himself upon the deeper aspects of his subject, only in practice he probably would do nothing of the kind. While so many people are clamouring for admission to our universities it is only realistic to expect the academics to accept that we do not live in an ideal world. Very often this concept of the maintenance of standards is a dignified facade to hide a form of snobbism which I find objectionable, the sort of argument put forward by Kingsley Amis in England that more inevitably means worse. I do not think this is so and if the day ever comes that our university educational system, which should be geared to the admission of all those who have the ability to enter, as ours is not at the moment, shuts its doors to qualified Irish applicants, even with the best academic motives, that would be a very bad thing.

I should like to ask the Minister in relation to the authority what is to be the position of the various research institutes which have proliferated in the country over the last 20 or 30 years. Some of these are doing excellent work. Some of them were developed because inter-collegiate rivalries of one kind or another, which we hope no longer exist, made it impossible to locate their work on one campus or another with the result that there is a certain illogical divorce between them and the whole structure of tertiary education I should like to see a situation in which there would be a much higher degree of cross fertilisation between these institutions and the universities and I hope the authority which, apparently, will have responsibility for the whole field of tertiary education, will also bear these institutions in mind.

I should like the Minister to elaborate on the recruitment of staff to the authority and the status they will hold. Will the authority advertise and recruit staff in its own way or will staff be seconded to it from the Department of Education?

On the whole, the Bill is a good one. The idea behind the Bill is the correct one. I do not blame the Minister for the delay in introducing the Bill. Anyone who has had any experience of academics knows that delays are inevitable.

I should like to associate myself with the expressions of approval of the existing officers of the authority, Dr. Ó Raifeartaigh and Mr. Jukes in particular, who have been very helpful and very worthy servants of the authority.

There is a slight air of unreality about this Bill and that is borne out by the paucity of the attendance during this debate and the few speakers who are anxious to offer. This is very, very sad. It shows that to the majority university education still has not got very much relevance. That cannot be said about a debate on agriculture. As I say, it is sad. It is also very wrong.

I endorse what Deputy FitzGerald said about writing into section 3 a specific clause providing that one of the functions of the authority will be to produce equality of opportunity in education. It might lead to nothing. It might be as much of a dead letter as are the principles of social justice enshrined in our Constitution, but at least it would be there.

The Minister says that he will endeavour generally to further higher education and promote knowledge of its value to the country. Judging by these benches he has quite a task in front of him. I hope he will instil into the authority that its function is something more than merely taking over the status quo in university education. I hope some element of crusading fervour will be imparted to the authority. I hope it will consider the level of university grants to students and admission requirements, relating these to the leaving certificate curriculum and to the needs of the new generation of children, who, under the beneficial results of the Minister's and his predecessor's secondary education policies, will be hammering at the doors of these universities in the next five or ten years. I hope the authority will have a responsibility to them as well as taking off the shoulders of the Minister some of the burden of running the university machine. If the day dawns when these young people clamour for and find their way into our universities, perhaps then these benches will be full for a discussion on higher education.

The somewhat casual manner in which this Bill has been circulated calls to mind the story about a senior member of a political party; on being offered a Cabinet post by the incoming Taoiseach, he said he had done his bit for Ireland and he would be happy to take Education as his portfolio.

That must have been many years ago.

Indeed, yes. He was not a member of the Labour Party or of the Fianna Fáil Party either. We have at last a piece of legislation which is most welcome. The Labour Party fully recognise there is urgent need for the establishment of this Authority and we hope this is a logical step towards providing an effective basis for the current operation and future development of university education. There has been a good deal of messing about over the past four or five years with educational developments. Free secondary education was introduced on an ad hoc basis. There were murmurs about raising the school-leaving age and operating transport systems without any great thought to the cost involved. They were purely ad hoc arrangements. One is sick to death of the subject of comprehensive education, now translated into community school concepts. Quite frankly, if I were a senior official in the Department of Education I would have been tempted to commit self-immolation on the floor of this House simply to try to get clear-cut decisions on education. We had all the talk about mergers and so forth. Certain things were done which bore little relationship to the needs of higher education and the future of education generally.

It is refreshing to find that we can tonight welcome this Bill. In doing so I want to pay tribute to the farsightedness and the competence of our educational planners within the Department who have been asking for years for this kind of legislation and who got very little assistance from this House and from successive Ministers. Negotiations between educationalists and the Department have broken down.

I concur in the criticism in relation to section 1. It should be more explicit. I have confidence in the Department of Education as such, distinguishing it from its political head and its previous political heads. Some people may feel the present Minister lacks imagination; some may feel he is caught in an impossible position but at least I think he has integrity, a quality badly needed in a Minister, one might even say stubbornness which is so necessary in facing the political pressures brought to bear on Ministers for Education particularly. I am rather worried about paragraph (c) of section 1 which says:

(c) an institution which the Minister, after consultation with An tÚdarás, designates by regulations as an institution of higher education for the purposes of this Act:

Initially, I think there should be contained in the Schedule to this Bill the various institutions which, as of now, will be designated by the Minister as coming within the broad, functional ambit of the authority. This would clear the air because there are various rumours and comments and representations made to Members of the House as to whether this institution or that would be included. Some of this talk is being deliberately provoked but it would clarify the position if the Minister were more explicit in that regard.

I concur with Deputy Thornley— it is always refreshing to see two Labour Deputies agree—that we have not just misgivings but that we would rather publicly put a question mark after the proposition of the Conference of Irish Universities. I am not convinced that a real need for it exists. I have a horror of building up in the educational field consultative organisations which would be superfluous. I have a holy terror of finding a redundant body on hand composed, as a Labour Party spokesman said, of bishops, provosts, county councillors and others meeting occasionally to give us their collective wisdom on higher education. I have yet to become convinced of the need for such a council in a small country such as ours and one might suggest gently to Deputy FitzGerald that he is indulging in a little special pleading. I sympathise with him because he is so often the target of his own academic colleagues and so often regarded as being so terribly reactionary in their eyes that in order to get himself off the hook on occasion I think he has to try to placate them. At any rate, so far as the conference is concerned, we are not convinced.

As regards section 3 which deals with the general functions I would urge the Minister to be more explicit on Committee Stage. One could usefully develop and expand that section to provide more general functions for that authority. On an historic occasion such as this it would be undesirable to have some dreadful hair-spliting in the future with various university presidents, for example, indicating that the authority had no function in relation to this or that matter. Such things as the need for planning and development for higher education, not mentioned in section 3—admittedly, it has the vague phraseology, "promoting an appreciation of the value of higher education and research", "co-ordination" and "furthering development"—should be included. The section should be more elaborate. It could certainly prove a useful defence for the chairman and members of the Authority in years ahead. I think this is necessary because I detect in many academic institutions a somewhat hostile reaction towards this Bill.

The suggestion has been put by the Labour Party spokesman that there should be incorporated in section 3 or section 4 of the Bill the need to democratise general administrative and governing structures of the higher educational institutions. It does not require any effort on our part to point out that in the national university structures the governing bodies, as I know them—I know one of them very well—are far from representative of either staff or students and not entirely representative of the local community. By any criterion one will hardly regard them as even representative, apart from being democratic or otherwise. There are within governing bodies self-perpetuating dynasties of a monopolistic type which have proved in many ways rather unresponsive and rather feudal and occasionally just stupid in terms of their reaction to the public interest, to staffing and to students. Such matters as the right of the authority to stipulate standing orders for the current governing bodies should be included. It would be a slight advantage in the case of some of these bodies and the Minister should consider this in connection with sections 3 and 4 of the Bill.

In regard to section 7, I would, perhaps, query the suggestion that the Authority "may annually or at such other intervals as it may determine, require any institution of higher education to submit a statement of its financial position..." I should be more harsh than that. A statement of its financial position may result in some of the accounting officers of universities in their deviousness saying "At this point we have X number of pounds in hands and X number at bank." One may then tell the Minister and the authority to "get lost" and that no further information is forthcoming.

There is, admittedly, the proviso that the institutions of higher education must comply with any requirements imposed on them under this section. Knowing something of the manner in which some universities keep their accounts and make them available to Departments and so on, I think this section should be further examined by the Minister or, perhaps, he might comment on it and reassure us in that regard.

One must refer to the other topic, autonomy, covered by Deputy FitzGerald and Deputy Thornley even if one is repetitive, because all parties have received strong representations in relation to this Bill on the question of university autonomy generally. It is, admittedly, the function of universities to advance teaching, research and the development generally of the intellectual and cultural values of the country. At times when one hears some of the comments by some of the Minister's colleagues about the word "intellectual" and particularly "intellectual values", one holds up one's hands at such snide comments and I think, therefore, one would sympathise with universities in endeavouring to develop intellectual and cultural values.

Of course the universities, in theory at any rate, are there to encourage open academic inquiry at university level. I see no conflict in the advancement of these aims and the setting up of this authority. I am convinced that it will not in any way diminish the overall freedom and relative, although admittedly limited, autonomy, which the universities now possess, because there does seem to be a general myth that the successful pursuance of the functions of this Authority will inevitably destroy that limited autonomy which the universities possess. I do not share this view any more than I would share the view that if the universities are to pursue their stated public functions their functions will be diluted in any way and taken over by the State, as is so often said to us.

I strongly believe that State involvement on behalf of the people, not on behalf of any allegedly bureaucratic sector of the public service, or group of public servants—a common assumption so often advanced by a university spokesman—will not in any way prove detrimental to academic freedoms. It is extremely difficult to get this across. As a trade unionist and knowing how jealously trade unionists tend to preserve their limited public freedom I can appreciate the point of view without sharing the attitude. I do not accept that experience in other countries proves the point of view that this Bill will be an encroachment on the academic freedoms currently enjoyed by the universities.

In the recent past and indeed to a fair degree as of now many of the governing bodies of the universities, in terms of the attitude of some of their staff and in terms of the social and political attitudes of many of their graduate products, have been the most staunch upholders of a self-elected élite and at times a self-appointed, self-administered and self-perpetuated sector in our society. The purpose of this House, of political life and of political agitation, is to democratise that development in our society over the decades. This Bill is a measure towards the advancement of that ideal.

I should like now to comment on section 12. I appreciate that there may be some confusion, as the Minister said, and that he may bring in an amendment to clarify the position. I accept generally speaking that it is not desirable that in the Book of Estimates one should get a predetermined, predecided allocation for a specific institution. The Minister did say that:

The Book of Estimates could contain, by way of information, details in relation to the various institutions concerned to show how the bulk sums were arrived at. As this modus operandi may not be clear from the existing draft, which might be said to inhibit the discretion of the authority, I propose to introduce an amendment at the Committee Stage which will clarify the position.

I certainly await the amendment with interest and when we see it we can consider the matter further.

Deputy FitzGerald has been making an undue distinction in regard to current capital expenditure in relation to the Bill and again I would wait until I see what the Minister has in mind. The allegations which might arise in regard to the earmarking of current expenditure, and the specific allocation of moneys for specific capital programmes, would best be left for consideration until we have heard the Minister's reply or get the amendment, when we can decide what to do.

The Labour Party may consider an amendment in that regard. In many respects it would be strengthening the hand of the authority rather than weakening it in any way. As regards the remaining sections I agree that on the authority there should be some student representation. It is stated that the members shall consist of a chairman and not more than 18 ordinary members of whom at least seven shall be academic members and at least seven shall be other than academic members. The Federation of University Teachers want half of the authority members to be drawn from the academic world but honestly one cannot accept that proposition. Likewise, the Union of Students of Ireland suggest that there should be six student members. My colleague, Deputy Thornley, and I feel there should be at least three student representatives nominated by the council of the USI.

If we had that situation it would be a logical development of the current student representation on the various governing bodies throughout the Republic. I am convinced that the other members of the authority would find a fresh and constructive approach coming from the student representatives. It is to be regretted that such was the relative lack of sympathy displayed by the governing body of UCD that the student representatives are finding life on that body rather difficult. They are not resigning and perhaps at times it does not do any harm to walk out in sheer disgust to show one's viewpoint. In relation to the higher authority itself this would bring a certain element of openness to it and it would be quite fair, if we want to build up, as the Taoiseach has often said, a participative democracy, that we should develop that power of representation.

Deputy Thornley has suggested that the chairmanship of the Authority should be decided by the appointed members of the authority itself. I would concur with this but I doubt very much if the Minister would accept it. I have the utmost faith and, in many respects, admiration for the current chairman. So long as the current chairmanship continues the Labour Party are quite happy. However, there could evolve a situation where the chairman would become the special preserve of changing Ministers of Education—and they have changed rather rapidly in the past decade—and that an element both of political and public service uncertainty might tend to enter into the appointment.

I would oppose the idea that members of the authority be appointed following consultations between the Minister and the chairman. This would place the chairman in an invidious and unfortunate position. He, above all, must be seen to be independent. He has tremendous national responsibility in a position of extreme delicacy and he should not be placed in that kind of position.

Regarding the removal of members from office, I would suggest that there be inserted in the Bill something on the lines of "Following consultation with the chairman of the authority" or, "Following notification to the authority" or "where good cause exists". It is a bit bold for the Government to state "The Government may remove an ordinary member of An tÚdarás from office. That is a little harsh and I think the Minister will find many legislative precedents in matters brought before this House, particularly in relation to health legislation where there is, at least, an element of consultation before a person finds himself getting a polite letter from the Minister and overnight he is gone.

I would question also the position where members might be nominated for election to either House of the Oireachtas, or nominated to Seanad Éireann, and thereby cease to be a member of An tÚdarás. I can think of a situation, for example in university academic life, where a person might be nominated for election to either House of the Oireachtas. He may not be elected—a number of people are not. If he is elected he should cease to be a member of the authority but I suggest to the Minister that a simple amendment stating a person ceases to be a member of An tÚdarás on election to the Houses of the Oireachtas would be in conformity with general practice, for example in the RTE Authority. In regard to the latter where a member is elected to either House of the Oireachtas he ceases to be a member of that authority. It would be wrong if 18 persons of eminence in this country, in charge of our higher education, should overnight find themselves out of office and out of the work of the authority.

These are my comments for the moment in relation to this Bill. It has been suggested that the chairman of An tÚdarás should be appointed by the President, but the Labour Party do not see a great deal of merit in that. If the Federation of University Teachers have not found much consolation from the Labour Party benches this evening in relation to the amendments they have suggested, this was not meant in an anti-academic sense. It was simply that we want this Bill to go through the House as quickly as possible. We consider it is a valuable piece of legislation and we are not going to indulge in any special pleading on anyone's behalf in relation to the Bill.

Under the guidance of the current chairman of the authority and with the hope that he and his fellow members will not find themselves in the years ahead being subject to enormous fluctuations in Government policy in relation to higher education, we support this Bill. Perhaps our wish that these fluctuations will not occur is expecting too much, with due respect to the Minister who is certainly not the target of our comments this evening.

There is one final point in regard to paragraph 21 of the schedule. We hope an annual report will be brought before this House rather than the periodic reports that were suggested yesterday.

I welcome this Bill. We all realise that if the Minister were St. Peter himself he could not deal with all aspects of education. The Minister is truly democratic; he is trying to see that higher education is undertaken in a democratic way and the Preamble to the Bill proves this point. It states that its purpose is to examine the existing provisions for higher education with a view to making recommendations to the Minister for Education on the necessity for the existing provisions or the elimination of unnecessary duplication. I was in this House when it was proposed that a Higher Education Authority be set up. I was very pleased with this because if anything will raise the standard of the people of any country it is education.

Higher education has been undertaken in all civilised countries and in States that have enjoyed their freedom for many years. We were hampered in this country and there was a lack of secondary schools so that very much depended on our national schools and the teachers there. These people did very good work and we owe much to them. Now we have free secondary education and this is a step that has been welcomed by all. The provision of higher education is another step forward and we should do all we can to help in this matter.

Arrangements for the placement of students is essential. When a student has an aptitude for a certain subject it is well known that frequently he gets to the top. If he is misplaced in another section he may not be so good at all. Paragraph (e) reads:

maintain a continual review of the country's needs in higher education;

That is a very important consideration. Our economic survival depends to a great extent on having highly qualified technical people. Paragraph (g) reads:

conduct inquiries and initiate and publish studies on problems of higher education;

That is another laudable and necessary exercise.

(i) make regulations governing the form in which each institution will present its annual budget and accounts to the authority;

All the Members of the House will welcome that as a good democratic exercise.

(j) endeavour generally to further the development of higher education and to promote a knowledge of its value to the country;

It is necessary to show to our people they have reached the time when they can have higher education in their own country and that a pupil can go from one institution to another and be chosen for a special course in higher education which is suited to his ability. One of the functions of the authority will be to assist in the co-ordination of State investment in higher education and to prepare courses for such investment; to promote an appreciation of the value of higher education and research. Research is the life-blood of our country. It is a great pleasure to visit some of the institutions that have been set up in my time in this House and see the advances that have been made in the last quarter of a century by our own Government and by our own people. A change has come about in the country. The day has gone when a child would be kept at home from school for some trivial reason. Nowadays parents are anxious that a child should have the advantage of the best education possible. They realise that if anyone wants to get to the top he has to acquire as much knowledge as possible. The Minister says in page 3 of his speech:

As will be seen from the terms of the Bill the role of An tÚdarás in relation to the provision to be made for higher education will be that of making recommendations.

...Its first general report which related to the year 1968-69 contained a review of its activities and dealt with many of the immediate problems connected with higher education.

This ad hoc body have succeeded in pinpointing their requirements for higher education. They will be able to advise the Minister and his Department. In regard to the appointment of the members I believe the Minister should have the power to remove a person from the board. The Minister is my colleague and since he became Minister for Education he has shown courtesy and consideration. He is not a man who will rush in and say “Paddy Burke should not be on that board because of some statement he made.” There might be people who would be acting against the national interest or who while they might be good in other fields, might not have the ability to deal with the matters it is the intention of this Bill they should deal with.

I welcome the idea of student representation. The man who is in the field as a student should be able to make his own observations. It is a good thing to see students taking an active interest in their own welfare. There was a time if a student said boo to the professor he would be out of the university or the school, as the case might be. Times have changed and we must change with them. If students go out into the street there is no harm done. They will come back again, because they have their own way of settling down.

It is gratifying to see that the Minister will be advised by people from all walks of life who are fitted to give advice and who have an interest in the wellbeing of the nation irrespective of politics, creed or class. More and more of our people are anxious to avail of higher education, whether technical or academic, and I hope that trend will continue.

I welcome this Bill, but there are one or two matters on which I should like an assurance from the Minister. One is the appointment and composition of the proposed authority. I should like to see all institutions of higher education having representation on this new body. Cultural, industrial and agricultural sectors will also need to be given representation.

An important point which has been made by other speakers is on the question of student representation. In my opinion there should be at least two students on the board, recommended by the Union of Students. As we know students are becoming a powerful influence not only in the political field but in the social and other fields. They should be given ample opportunity of airing their views.

I would like to see the chairman of the board appointed by the Government on the recommendation of the authority. If the Minister appoints the chairman there is the danger that he will appoint someone on whom he can exert considerable pressure. I would not like, for example, to see a senior civil servant from the Department appointed as chairman. I would prefer to see someone from outside the Department, and indeed from outside the immediate jurisdiction of the Minister, appointed in that capacity. The chairman of the Ryan Tribunal was appointed by the Minister for Education with the disastrous result we all know, but that is outside the scope of this Bill and I do not wish to dwell on it.

It is a good idea not to appoint the full complement to the authority immediately because as the Minister has pointed out it may be found that others deserve to be appointed at a later date.

I do not think the appointment of chairman should be permanent. The Irish Federation of University Teachers suggested a period of seven years and this seems to me to be a sensible suggestion.

Section 4 states:

In performing its functions, An tÚdarás shall bear constantly in mind the national aims of restoring the Irish language and preserving and developing the national culture and shall endeavour to promote the attainment of those aims.

I can quite see the idealism it is attempted to incorporate in this Bill but there is a danger that the authority will be over-burdened because of over-emphasis on this subject by certain Ministers for Education. I would respectfully refer the Minister to the reservations of certain members of the Commission of Higher Education on the attitude to Irish in general in the country. Mr. D. Buckley had this to say in the Commission's report, 1960-67,

Provision of staff and facilities for teaching through Irish should be conditional upon the existence of reasonable demand for such courses on the part of students.

Dr. J.J. McElligott expressed reservations that,

‘Experience over the past 40 years has shown how unsuccessful have been efforts to make Irish a spoken language of general use. These efforts, to my mind, have been responsible for more than one educational setback in as much as other and more worthwhile targets of educational policy were neglected such as commercial and scientific subjects, modern languages and cultural activities of a more varying kind, with consequent adverse effects in the field of higher education'.

He also pointed out that the UNESCO Institute of Education recommended that only about 15 to 30 minutes a day should be devoted to the second language specifically. If we are to be honest it is generally recognised by all and sundry, including the Government, that Irish is the second language and over-emphasis on it certainly does have a detrimental effect in schools. It can indeed impede development and lower standards. For all too long it has been the badge of nationality. I am in favour of a revival but the measures at present adopted by the Government are having no effect whatsoever in that regard. The number of native speakers is dwindling yearly. That is why, as I say, this could be a very dangerous point particularily if the Minister for Education is very much in favour of a revival at any cost.

Section I (1) (c) states:

an institution which the Minister, after consultation with An tÚdarás, designates by regulations as an institution of higher education for the purposes of this Act.

I agree with the Federation of University Teachers that the iniative should lie with An tÚdarás to designate places of higher education. This would avoid the Minister succumbing to political pressures.

I believe a member of An tÚdarás should be removed, where good cause has been shown, on the recommendation of the chairman. It is stated that where a member of An tÚdarás attains the age of 70 he should cease to hold office. It would be a good thing if the age limit were lower because I am convinced, with education developing as rapidly as it is throughout the world today, that young people are in a better position to judge our needs and our potential.

I do not propose to delay the House very long. The House in general welcomes this legislation which provides for the setting up of An tÚdarás which will advise and establish guidelines for long-term planning especially in relation to our university system. We all know and appreciate the role education has played in our social and economic development. We are all aware how much State expenditure on education during the last five to seven years has increased. As the Higher Education Authority pointed out in its first report more money will be needed as time goes on. This is coupled with the rapid changes which have taken place within the system in recent years. The numbers attending post-primary schools have gone up rapidly. The free education scheme was implemented and the free transport system and the raising of the school leaving age all played a part, no doubt, in increasing the number of pupils availing of post-primary education.

It is our aim, and I hope it will be the general aim, to reduce the element of snobbery in education, if I may put it that way, which regrettably was present in this country as well as in many other countries. We should like to see a broader outlook in this regard. There is no room for snobbery in education especially in the arts, science, technological and other faculties. It is edifying to see the numbers who are responding to the provision which has been made for post-primary education.

The Higher Education Authority commented on this fact and in its report issued a word of warning to all. The authority referred to the limitation on student numbers and to the numbers of students who could not be catered for possibly because of a failure to provide adequately for future needs. It also referred, and I think rightly, to the limitation which is imposed on the Minister in any given year in the amount of money which he may be able to extract from the Exchequer to support the educational programme in general.

We are dealing now with higher education and we are referring in passing to the fact that by reason of the numbers coming forward to post-primary schools there will be an increasing demand for higher education. In a debate like this, talking about the setting up of An tÚdarás as an authority to advise the Minister, one is more or less confined in the scope of the suggestions one might like to make. One of the points which I should like to stress is the fact that, as the Higher Education Authority pointed out, accommodation is the greatest need, accommodation and better appointments within the walls of the universities.

If one were to refer to the faculties or to the subjects taught, one could stress the need for an extension of the programme and one could regret the lack of facilities for some faculties. I have in mind the practical side of life, not the academic side. To give an example, some time ago we had a debate here about Bord Fáilte and some of us referred to the number of girls who leave school and turn their backs on domestic science. I should like to see a degree in domestic science in our universities. That would upgrade the subject and perhaps youngsters leaving post-primary schools might become interested in it.

There are other points with which I should like to deal and which I should like to see implemented in our university system. In general we are all agreed that, if we are to have a better university system, this must be brought about by long-term planning and by advanced advice, shall we say, and not by fire brigade tactics. One cannot change the educational system overnight but one can mend the system which we have and one can extend its various facets and, in time, one can mould it to the needs of the community.

Our university system served us quite well in the past. We have heard a good deal of criticism of it. One of the criticisms was, regrettably perhaps, that we over-weeningly favoured the academic side as against the technological and scientific side. Possibly in the past the need was not so great as it is now, but the need is now pressing for this type of specialised knowledge. If we are to produce graduates of the standard to be found in Europe perhaps, or in England or America, we will need all the support and all the help we can get from the community by way of co-operation and a stiff amount of money together with the necessary money to invest within the walls of those universities in order to create the type of institution which we would like to see here in the years ahead.

I should like, first of all, to say that I appreciate very much the constructive manner in which Deputies dealt with this Bill. It does not follow that I agree with everything that was said but, nevertheless, I accept that their criticism was made in a constructive manner.

I shall first deal with some of the points raised and then, perhaps, deal with the Bill in a more general way. Reference was made by Deputies FitzGerald and Thornley to the fact that there was a certain criticism of the members of the ad hoc Higher Education Authority when it was first set up because of their alleged attitude towards the merger proposals. It is true to say that they have now more than proved themselves. In their first report they have shown to the people of the country that they are an autonomous body, independent not only of the Minister but also of the institutions of higher education from which they come.

Deputy FitzGerald referred to the Royal College of Surgeons and wondered why it was not included in the Bill. I should like to assure him that there is no doubt but that the Royal College of Surgeons will be classed as an institution of higher education for the purposes of the Bill. So also will the institution in Limerick and also other institutions which are constituted on similar lines.

A number of Deputies referred to section 1 (1) (c) of the Bill. They pointed out that it provides that "institution of higher education" means:

an institution which the Minister, after consultation with An tÚdarás, designates by regulations as an institution of higher education for the purposes of this Act.

They felt it would be better if the Authority were responsible for this rather than the Minister. Of course, the fact that it is referred to in this way in the Bill does not mean that the initiative necessarily rests with the Minister. In fact, I should imagine that the initiative would come on practically all occasions from the authority but it is visualised that the designation will be done by formal regulations which would be placed before the House and for that reason obviously it is necessary that the Minister should be the one to designate the new institutions of higher education. It is also well to bear in mind that where new institutions are being set up their establishment will, generally speaking, involve legislation.

Deputy FitzGerald also felt that, perhaps, the Conference of Irish Universities should have been brought into being as part of this Bill. Without knowing what the future constitution of Irish universities will be, it would be difficult, to say the least of it, to bring in a Bill setting up a Conference of Irish universities. The whole reform of the university system is very important. It has been suggested that I have been rather slow in bringing in legislation in relation to this matter but I feel that because of its importance and because of the fact that whatever legislation is brought in here will affect Irish education for very many years to come, it is important that we should be very careful to ensure that the legislation which we bring in here will be as effective as it is possible to make it. Again, in relation to the conference Deputy Thornley and, I think, Deputy Desmond mentioned that they were not particularly concerned about it. For my part I have an open mind in relation to it. I am awaiting the recommendations of An tÚdarás in regard to it and to other matters associated with the organisation of higher education in general and university education in particular. I shall make up my mind when I see what the HEA itself puts before me in regard to it.

Deputies FitzGerald and Thornley referred to autonomy. I have already placed on record my views in relation to autonomy. I spoke at length on it in my reply to the Education Estimates. I do not propose to paraphrase what I said because there would always be the danger of what I say being misinterpreted—I do not say, deliberately, but there is always the danger. I would tend to agree with Deputy FitzGerald that the definition of autonomy differed depending on who attempted to define it. There is one definition by those inside the university and another definition by those outside university. I would agree that we should have some sympathy, perhaps, with the attitudes of university authorities in the sense that I suppose everybody is conservative, even the most left-wing individual, in his own particular field. At the same time, I feel it is essential that we should have a via media in relation to this and that we should try to approach it with an open mind.

Suggestions were made that we should change the section of the Bill which relates to the membership and define academics as those who are engaged in full-time academic work. If we did this I am afraid it is quite possible we would be limiting ourselves to an unnecessary degree. There are professors who are not classed as full-time professors. I am told that professors, for example, of clinical medicine are part-time and we would, by deciding that the only academics entitled to be on the Higher Education Authority must be full-time, be rather narrowing the numbers from whom we can choose. Deputy FitzGerald mentioned that if a person were appointed at 68 he could go on for a considerable number of years. Of course, the members of the Authority must retire at 70.

There was some discussion on the question of the appointment of a chairman. What seemed to be implied was that the Minister would tend to accept what the chairman proposed in relation to the membership. In fact, that is not so. The chairman can give advice but the Minister does not necessarily have to follow it. It is pretty normal procedure for the Government to nominate the chairman and I think it is important that we should be in a position to select the best qualified man for the job. For that reason I left it open so that we could have either a full-time or a part-time chairman. In some cases it is possible to get a very well qualified man willing to act full-time. On the other hand, there are occasions on which perhaps the most suitable person would not be able to take office on a full-time basis.

Reference was made to the fact that the approval of the Minister is required, especially in relation to staff appointments made by the Higher Education Authority. I want to clarify the position. The situation is that the approval of the Minister arises only in relation to the creation of the post. After that the Authority can appoint whomsoever it wishes.

Reference was made to the desirability of the Authority issuing a report annually. Deputy Desmond referred to the fact that I am free to call on the Authority, under section 21, to issue such a report at any time.

Deputy Thornley and Deputy FitzGerald referred to the £15 million for capital work. It should be obvious from the reports published to date by an tÚdarás that they feel free to express whatever views they wish and they have, in fact, done so. This shows that they are in fact an autonomous body. They came up with £24 million in one instance as against my figure of £15 million. That is explained in the context of new building techniques and standards and methods of costing of which the Higher Education Authority could not have been aware when they framed their estimate. I do not think there is any conflict between An tÚdarás and myself in this matter. On the debate on my Estimate I pointed out that the new techniques and methods had resulted in my Department succeeding in reducing the estimated cost of the regional technical college by £2 million.

Deputy Desmond asked for the deletion of the section which provides that, if a member is nominated for either the Dáil or the Seanad, he will be required to resign from the Authority. This is standard practice. If an academic decided to contest a Seanad Election it might be suggested that, because he was a member of the Higher Education Authority, he would have an advantage over other candidates.

From the point of view of the powers conferred on An tÚdarás, An tÚdarás will, on the one hand, provide information and advice for the Government and, on the other hand, transmit the practical effects of the Government's decisions through the medium of their grant allocations to higher educational institutions. It is in this way that An tÚdarás will assist in the co-ordination of State investment in higher education. In its role as a body making recommendations in relation to grant allocations and advising on developments generally, it is logical that it should be the body to give advice on the establishment of new institutions of higher education. It is equally logical that it should maintain a continuous review of the demand and need for higher education. In carrying out this review and keeping abreast of developments it is only natural that it should require a great deal of information from institutions of higher education, not only at stated intervals, but also as necessity arises. The authority to seek this information is contained in this Bill.

With regard to section 10, it should be borne in mind that a situation could not be allowed to develop in which each institution would conduct its affairs oblivious of what was happening elsewhere. All unnecessary duplication must be avoided. This will be one of the functions of the Higher Education Authority. There can be no question of one institution growing to a size at which it becomes unmanageable while others from the point of view of student numbers might be less than viable. Furthermore, universities could not proceed without due recognition of the other institutions of third level education and the role they must fulfil. The capacity of the nation to absorb the products of our higher educational system, while making due allowance for wastage, must be one of the prime factors determining the overall provision to be made for higher education.

With regard to the constitution of An tÚdarás, the present body, with its membership of 14, has worked very well. One of its greatest assets is that it is not constituted on a representative basis. It can and does act in an entirely objective manner when examining the various matters coming before it. The provision to enable the Government to increase membership to 18 is designed to enable the Government to appoint an additional member or members should the Government feel that An tÚdarás might be in need of additional expertise in a particular field.

There have been some comments on section 3 with regard to general functions. All one could hope to do in a Bill of this kind is to have a wide statement of general functions. These particular terms were actually suggested to me by the Higher Education Authority itself. If we become too specific the danger is we will not know where to end. One could fill a book with all the suggestions made as to what might be added. Certain other suggestions which might be added to this might mean nothing in law. This was the only way in which we could couch the general functions—the way in which we have done it. As Deputies may see, section 3 assigns to An tÚdarás the general function of furthering the development of higher education, assisting in the co-ordination of State investment in higher education and preparing proposals for such investment and promoting an appreciation of the value of higher education.

Immediately following this section, in sections 5 to 13, the specific functions and powers which An tÚdarás will exercise in relation to its efforts to attain the general aims are spelled out. The general function expressed in section 3 will also be fulfilled by the interaction of An tÚdarás with the authorities of the various higher education institutions and with other interests and bodies concerned in a way in which all of these bodies would come to see themselves as participating in the process of defining objectives, settling priorities and formulating policies and programmes, all of which would add up to the submission of advice to An tÚdarás and the Government which would enable them in turn to make informed choices when deciding on the amount of public funds which should be devoted to higher education services.

The underlining objective is to create a system under which those immediately concerned in the running of higher education institutions will be conscious of their own involvement in the process of policy making and will better appreciate the factors which lead to Government decisions affecting higher education as a whole and will recognise more clearly where their own institutions fit into the general scheme of things.

Deputy Cott, in regard to section 4, quoted some people as saying that Ministers for Education might tend to overburden the Authority in relation to this national aim of restoring the Irish language. I regret to say that our universities have not overburdened themselves in relation to it. If, in fact, we have failed in our efforts to revive the language—of course, I do not admit this—then the universities must bear a considerable share of the blame. In my view the big mistake made in the effort to revive the language was that we tended to ask the little children travelling the country roads to school to revive it while the universities, which might be expected to give the example in relation to the revival of the language which is the most important part of our national culture, did relatively little.

This section should not be interpreted merely as a pious hope but as a provision that places a definite legal onus on the Authority. It would also enable the Authority when making recommendations to give a degree of priority and special treatment to proposals connected with the advancement of Irish or teaching through Irish in institutes of higher education. This section lays on the authority a general duty in respect of the national aim of restoring the Irish language and developing the national culture. This function can be discharged in the same manner in which the Authority can perform the general function expressed in section 3, that is, by the interaction of the HEA with authorities of various higher education institutions and so on.

This process is bound to emerge gradually and in practice it must commence with specific proposals from the institutions themselves to An tÚdarás in relation to the development of their activities to be funded by An tÚdarás. An tÚdarás could make a beginning by asking the institutions to consider how they could contribute to the aims in question and it would be hoped that among the proposals put forward there might be some which might be accorded some priority for funding in 1972/3 or 1973/4.

An indication of the choice of action which would be likely to present itself can be found in the Report of the Commission on Higher Education, 1967 which investigated the whole problem in considerable depth. Certain practical proposals were made there— for example, a preliminary survey to determine the number of university teachers able and willing to teach their subjects through Irish; measures to ensure an adequate supply of text books and specialist literature in Irish; schemes of financial aid for students incurring additional expense through taking courses in Irish.

Recommendations were also made by Comhairle na Gaeilge which very broadly are similar in their general nature to those made by the Commission although they differ in detail. Whatever selection from these alternatives may be made it would seem that the most positive contribution which An tÚdarás could make would be to consider as sympathetically as the availability of funds allows the case that Irish studies and teaching through Irish warrants special treatment for the university departments concerned in relation perhaps to staff student ratio and research grants.

As I said already, if An t-Údarás are to advise me on the development of the higher education system generally, and assist in the co-ordination of State investment in it, it seems logical that they should be the body to advise on all aspects and proposals for the establishment of new institutions of higher education. The maintenance of a continuous review of the demand and needs for higher education was specified in the outline terms of reference of An t-Údarás. This was decided by the Government and published in August, 1968. In order to carry out this review effectively it was felt necessary for An tÚdarás to organise the production, the collection and the correlation of statistical material of all kinds in relation to designated higher education institutions. It will also be necessary that An t-Údarás have full access to all information, financial and otherwise, relating to such institutions.

The distinction between demand and need in the text is deliberate. Broadly, demand in this context means the totality of qualified applicants for admission to higher education institutions. To meet demand fully would imply an open-door policy towards the admission of all qualified applicants to the faculties of their choice. In some professional faculties the universities have already reached the maximum number of students for whom existing facilities can cater. On the other hand, need in this context is the estimate of the requirements of the community for the services of graduates of various categories, due allowance being made, of course, for drop-outs owing to failure in examinations and other reasons. Need in this sense can only be determined by manpower forecasting techniques which are still to a very considerable degree imperfect. However, as Deputies are aware, such forecasting is an integral part of economic planning and is being undertaken currently by Government Departments, for example, the Department of Education in relation to the teaching service and the Department of Labour in relation to technicians and skilled operatives. Of course, it has to be recognised that need cannot be estimated with anything approaching absolute accuracy as it is always difficult to foresee the extent to which circumstances may change. Nevertheless I feel that once need has been broadly assessed target outputs for graduates of various kinds can be set and expansion programmes planned to meet these targets.

I suppose it could equally be said —I do not know whether Deputy Thornley would agree with me here or not—that there could also be planned reduction in outputs where it might appear they are already too high. However, I would accept that some additional need might have to be conceded in order to cater for legitimate aspirations to acquire higher education even if this has to be done to some degree at the expense of some emigration of the products of the higher education system.

One of the functions of An tÚdarás would be to endeavour to clarify these issues so that the Government might, first, be advised as to what is necessary to meet need, and secondly be furnished with the information required to make a decision whether some additional concession should be made to need and if so how much. The Government's decision published in August, 1968 also included in its outline terms of reference the placement of students. It is envisaged that An tÚdarás in their quinquennial submissions to the Minister would supply the best analysis of demand and need that can be made and that the Government's decision on such submissions will contain general policy directions as to the overall provision of student places which should be aimed at by the end of the quinquennium. Such general directions, it is expected, would include a certain order of priority in relation to science, technology, management, business studies and so on. Of course, the validity of such choices will depend on the success of the forecasting of demand and need and identifying and giving early warning of social and economic trends.

All this must imply a limitation on the admission of students to all faculties in all the universities in the not too distant future. As I said previously, there are already limitations on the numbers of students admitted to many professional schools. It would seem that with the number of students qualifying for admission to the university increasing all the time, and with the stimulus of the scheme of State grants for university students, subject to a means test, we are coming close to the time when admission to every university place will be competitive.

I might say that this is already substantially the position in Britain. As many Deputies will know, there is a central organisation, the Universities Central Council for Admission who handle all applications for admission to British universities centrally. They match candidates to places by reference to their academic achievements, preferences for courses and preferences for institutions. This is a very expensive operation and I do not visualise that at the moment we would be likely to utilise that system because the number of universities and higher education institutions which we have are limited but it might be that in our situation here it would be preferable that a centralised system to control admission should cover non-university third level institutions as well as universities. In fact, there might be no alternative to operating this type of central agency.

If we take sections 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 together and analyse them we can construct a model of the entire procedure which is envisaged from the submission of claims for grants from public funds by institutions of higher education, through the process of appraisal and analysis of such claims, to the point at which the final decision will be made on them. Section 7, section 8 (1) and section 11 ensure that An tÚdarás will be supplied with and have access to all the information that they will require for the performance of their functions under this Bill. The purpose of giving An tÚdarás power to specify the manner in which requests for State subvention shall be made and to require institutions to supply them with all relevant information is to ensure that all institutions concerned shall support their requests for funds with statistical information relating to students, staff and costs in a form which the Authority will determine.

Two purposes will be served by this arrangement. First of all, the necessary statistical information will have to be supplied as a condition for the consideration of requests for funds in every case so that the information will be available when it is required, and secondly that over a period of years it will be possible from the statistics to work out norms in relation to such matters as staff student ratios, departmental costs, administrative and technical support services, library operations, academic services such as examinations and prizes, maintenance costs and so on, against which claims for funds can be assessed. Eventually it would be hoped that An tÚdarás would arrange that higher education authorities would submit proposals for programmes for development at intervals of five years, but of course each institution would be required to submit annually an estimate of its requirements in the following year. The term of five years I have mentioned is not in the wording of section 7 only because it is clear that in the final analysis An tÚdarás would be forced to gear its forward planning to the general system in the public service which operates at present, namely, a system of forecast estimates for three years ahead.

On the basis of experience in Britain, it is generally believed that a five-year period would be the most suitable. I think we could accept in relation to major developments in the field of higher education that it would be difficult to envisage new courses being organised, additional staff with specialised qualifications, and new buildings and facilities being provided within a period of three years.

Perhaps I should outline briefly the steps and the procedure leading to overall Government decisions on university financing. First, there will be the determination of the current financial position of each institution to be funded by An tÚdarás in order to establish the extent to which existing assets and current income, other than income from the State, can support the activities of the institution concerned. Each institution would submit a development programme to cover a period of five years. It would have to support this proposal with a detailed breakdown of current operational costs, a statistical breakdown of students and staff, projection of the growth of student numbers, increases in staff, and expenditure on buildings and equipment which the proposed programme would entail.

An tÚdarás would examine these programmes. It would work out a co-ordinated scheme for the development of the whole system over the five-year period, bearing in mind the need to eradicate unnecessary or uneconomic duplication and the desirability of encouraging the development of distinctive centres of excellence in each institution. At this point claims for development of new fields of study or research would be considered and, if necessary, choices could be made between competing claims. The entire scheme should be broken down into its various elements and an order of priority for these elements suggested. All these elements would then be costed.

The recommendations of An tÚdarás would be submitted to the Minister for Education and, after processing in the Departments of Education and Finance, in consultation with An tÚdarás they would be submitted to the Government for a policy decision. It is hoped it might be possible for An tÚdarás to be given a decision in general terms indicating the extent to which the recommendations were acceptable, having regard to the resources available and to other priorities. The Government decision might cover, for example, the limit to which the overall number of university places might be increased over the five year period; the projects that might be undertaken by the various colleges and those which should be postponed; the extent of the provision for capital sums to be made in respect of the five years and the extent to which the total allocation of recurrent grants might be increased over five years.

Section 10 (2) would have to be considered in conjuction with section 6 (2) to ensure overall control in relation to the number of student places to be provided while, at the same time, ensuring that no single institution would be allowed to grow too big while others remained less than viable.

With regard to section 12, it is envisaged that the total of the allocations approved for any given year would be paid over to the Authority for transmission to the institutions concerned. I think Deputies will agree with me that normal parliamentary control would demand that the amounts, whether capital or current, proposed to be allocated to each institution should be shown separately in the Book of Estimates. What will appear in the subheads in the Estimates will be the total amounts, one capital and one current, and in an appendix will be shown the amounts made available to each third level institution.

When general policy in relation to the three-or five-year period has been given, An tÚdarás should revise the programme originally submitted in the light of these decisions and should submit for approval proposals showing the allocation proposed to be made to each of the institutions concerned in the first year of the period in question. In respect of each subsequent year further allocations would be recommended. Each proposal would be related to the allocation of the previous year and to the general policy laid down for the entire period. When it becomes possible to operate on the quinquennial basis I have mentioned, An tÚdarás should prepare a mid-term review showing the out-turn of the programme to date and the progress made towards the original targets which had been approved. It could recommend then any revisions of such targets as might be deemed necessary. At the end of the quinquennium there should be another review and this should be submitted with the recommended programme for the following quinquennium.

With regard to An tÚdarás, it is not constituted on a representative basis. I think it would be illogical to expect a body constituted on a representative basis to be able to make recommendations on an objective and impartial manner, free from local pressures and interests. The reservation of a minimum number of places for holders of academic posts does not mean that the members appointed in that category are to be considered as representatives of the various institutions to which they belong. The provision is intended to show a special concern for the expression of a body of opinion, with a close personal association and continuing interest in the matters under consideration. The Authority have not a proprietary interest in the institutions with which they will be concerned; they merely make recommendations and carry out certain executive functions. There is much more I could say on that aspect but I shall finish on that point.

Reference was made to students. I have a great respect for the work done by students. I have met them on many occasions since I became Minister and I have always found them an excellent group of young people. I am anxious to give them a role in the development and operation of our educational system. As the House is aware, I have appointed a student to the governing body of each of the three constituent colleges of the National University of Ireland. However, I do not believe in appointing students simply because they are students. I will do this only when it is clear to me that they have a contribution to offer. The nature of the tasks allotted to An tÚdarás, as well as its non-representative nature, precludes the appointment of representatives of the student body as such. However, students are not ineligible for consideration. I have a feeling that the demand for such representation is based on a misconception. An tÚdarás is not part of the university or the higher education structure. It is a separate organisation set up for the specific purpose of giving independent advice to the Minister. It is not an elected body. The members are appointed entirely on the basis of their expertise, their experience and their qualifications for the particular assignment. Long term planning is an essential feature of the work of An tÚdarás. The term of membership, accordingly, should be reasonably long. The proposal is five years with eligibility for reappointment for another five years. Allowance must be made for the fact that a student would need to be at least two or three years in the university before acquiring any real acquaintance with the work there. Any proposal for the appointment of a person to represent student interests for a further period of five years would hardly be a reasonable one.

Again it needs to be emphasised that an appointment to An tÚdarás is based on personal qualifications. Again I want to stress that students are not ineligible. It is simply their lack of experience and the opportunity to have acquired the necessary knowledge to make them useful members which would be the obstacle to their appointment. The fundamental issue here in relation to the membership of An tÚdarás is that it should be adequate, useful and efficient. An tÚdarás will be dealing mainly with financial and administrative matters and with academic questions only to the extent that they impinge on the financial and administrative matters.

Students could not be expected to have the necessary expertise in this area of activity, but I would say this— I see no reason why an tÚdarás could not appoint students in an advisory capacity. I have shown my goodwill towards students in the appointments I have already made, and I think that when Deputy FitzGerald advocated that students should be put on the Authority he was not all that certain what role they might fill. As I say, I am very favourably disposed towards them, but I think that if the Authority were to appoint them in an advisory capacity this would be the best way in which they could contribute towards the development of our educational system vis-à-vis the Higher Education Authority.

Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 17th February, 1971.
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