I support Deputy Thornley's amendment almost in stronger terms than he himself supports it. If this amendment is not included in the Bill, I suspect that the Higher Education Authority might, on the one hand, consider itself inhibited in taking steps to try to secure more democratic structures for the colleges while on the other hand, they might consider themselves entitled to resist any approaches from the HEA on this subject. I fear that if some impetus is not applied externally, the process of democratisation of the structure of our university colleges will be frustratingly and dangerously slow.
The Minister will be aware that it is almost two years now since a very unusual situation was created in our college by the action of a particular group of students who at that time had a grievance that most of the students and many of the staff considered to be legitimate. They secured the support of a large number of students thereby creating the situation in which, for a few days, the normal operations of the college were suspended. Much of what happened at that time was constructive and, indeed, in those days when normal routine was suspended, staff and students came together in an atmosphere and under conditions which facilitated a kind of communication that had never existed previously. That was healthy. However, what is depressing at the end of all that unique experience which many of us valued greatly as a human experience, is that two years later we are no further on. So slow are the internal processes of a university that even staff themselves have not yet enunciated their views on what changes and structures they wish for, arising out of those and other events. The governing authority of the college has not found occasion to apply its mind to this matter.
That is the pace at which these matters are dealt with within the colleges when there is no external stimulus. If this slow pace is to continue, it would be easy to foresee the re-creation, at some point, of a similar situation which might not end as happily. In that particular case it was partly luck and partly hard work by a lot of people that converted a potentially dangerous situation into one which turned out to be a potentially constructive one.
If we do nothing to secure a genuine democratisation of our university colleges, they will remain extraordinarily vulnerable to unrest of this kind because, as is the case in Irish universities, there are governing authorities which have great powers. Where the governing authority may be, in certain matters, the President or Provost, there are great powers but these powers are constituted so undemocratically that they do not carry conviction with and do not have authority in the proper sense of the word over staff or students, authority that is supported and accepted naturally and easily by staff and students.
Then you have a potentially dangerous situation. In the constituent colleges of the NUI at the moment you have Governing Bodies on which the junior staff—by junior I do not mean junior assistants in their early twenties; I mean the vast bulk of the staff, including people of some years of age, myself amongst them—have no right to elect anybody and can secure representation only by standing for election by the graduates, depriving the graduates, in a sense, of the kind of representatiton they should have. It is only through them the junior staff can secure representation. Those who have representation on the Governing Body are, in fact, the senior staff of the college and they have a very minor representation. The professors elect six out of 34 members. The junior staff elect no one. The students elect no one.
The fact that the Governing Body in its membership in our college and in the other colleges is reasonably representative in that there are junior staff and students on these bodies is because it has proved possible to manipulate the electoral system in many ways. The Minister has contributed to that. Another student was co-opted by the Governing Body itself. Junior staff are elected by graduates.
A system in which there is no right of representation is one that deprives the body in question of the kind of authority it should have. Moreover, the Academic Councils are the disciplinary bodies. They consist only of the professors. Not alone are they confined to the professors, who are a minority of the staff, but they may not set up any committee comprising anyone who is not a professor. Committees can only be committees of members of the Academic Council. It is illegal for anybody else to be on them and so, when it was proposed, and when there was a very considerable body of opinion amongst the staff that disciplinary matters, which are the responsibility of the Academic Council, might in the first instance be handled by a joint committee of staff and students, as is the case in Trinity College, it proved legally impossible to do this. There is no legal way in which the college can create such a joint body, a body which would carry much more weight in student discipline than a purely professional body.
Our colleges are hidebound by an ancient charter in which three elements were involved—the British Liberal Party, the Irish Catholic Hierarchy and the Board of Education. Two of these bodies are defunct and the third has moved on to some degree from where it was and does not necessarily reflect today quite the same attitude it had 60 years ago. To have a body incapable of changing anything and vulnerable to any kind of unrest is a very dangerous situation. I am afraid that the pace of change within the universities is simply too slow. The mechanics of the system are too slow. The interests built into the system resist change. The Governing Body, constituted as our governing bodies are, with an Academic Council constituted as ours is, is unlikely to welcome and press forward for reforms that would, in fact, totally change its character and lead to the disappearance of more than half the members and a changed system of representation.
The pace at which this House has been busy reforming itself over the past 20 or 30 years confirms this. To leave reform to a body itself is to court very slow results indeed. In our case we have no alternative because nobody can reform us except ourselves. With other bodies there is some possibility of pressure from outside reforming them. It is important that the Higher Education Authority should have a function in this matter and, if Deputy Thornley's amendment is not accepted, the authority may be slow to intervene in these matters, may feel it has not got any legal function and, while it is an ad hoc body, and probably feels free to do what it likes, once it has legal functions defined, it may become more inhibited and the colleges may very well say: “That is all very well, but what has it got to do with you? There is nothing in this Bill about structural reform. Your job is to get more money for us.” In the absence of this amendment I fear the authority will be inhibited in this respect and I do not think that that is the intention of the Minister.
The purpose of the Bill is to set up an Authority to assist in the development of higher education generally. I would, therefore, press the Minister very strongly, in the light of my experience, on the dangerous situation in the NUI colleges, and because of the rigidity of their structures, pending any reform, to accept this amendment so that the process of reform may be speeded up. There is no power to enforce reform. That would be undesirable. These are matters the colleges will ultimately have to agree amongst themselves, but it gives them a function in pushing them in the right direction, and the right to go to the colleges and ask for information as to their thinking on reform and recommend to the Government what changes in legislation may be necessary to secure reform. It is important that the HEA should play this role. The ad hoc body has done this. It has retained representation from the Irish Federation of University Teachers on the structure of reform. I was associated with Deputy Thornley in some submissions in that respect. When it is a statutory body I am worried that it will feel precluded from pursuing this matter further and the possibility of the Authority helping the process along by being a channel of communication and a pressure between the universities and the Minister, with a view to getting reforms, I am afraid that this channel might dry up and I would, therefore, strongly support Deputy Thornley's amendment.
