What I have quoted from the printed Dáil debates seems to me to constitute a disreputable attack upon three most distinguished members of the Judiciary who were doing their simple duty scrupulously, courageously and well, in circumstances which for them, as graduates of the National University, must have been difficult and even at times painful.
I am strengthened in my view that this sort of attack is resented by the public when I read in Hibernia of May 20th the following comment on page 6:
It is all the more regrettable therefore that Mr. McGilligan should have, in the Dáil Debate on the U.C.D. Bill, launched such an irresponsible attack on the Judiciary. This is not the first time that Mr. McGilligan has attacked the Judiciary in this way. In the debate on the P.R. Bill, together with Mr. John A. Costello, he made an even more violent attack on the judges.
We wonder if Mr. McGilligan and Mr. Costello have any idea of the effect which this kind of talk can have on the general public. How can ordinary people have any respect for the judges and the Law Courts if leading public men are prepared to speak of them in this way? It is extraordinary conduct from men who are not only political leaders but former Attorneys General and in the front rank of the legal profession. Surely they should have more respect for the institutions of the State which they themselves helped to build?
We are quite aware that the system of appointing judges, based on preferment for lawyers who have supported the Party in power, is a bad one, and we hope that, one day, it will be changed. But, despite this bad system of appointment, Ireland has been very fortunate in the judges who have served her since the foundation of the State. The highest standards have been maintained. Judges, once appointed, have always been above politics, and we know no case where any judge has left himself open to a charge of political bias.
On the contrary we know of several cases where judges have given decisions which have been embarrassing to the Government of the day. If the rest of us lived up to the standards of integrity and impartiality which the Judiciary has set for us, the community would be in a much healthier state.
I felt justified in reading that extract from the editorial comment, because I feel in writing that way, Hibernia speaks for the majority in this country and in this House, in relation to that kind of attack.
On this question of advertising posts, I feel that there is a good deal of truth in what Senator Quinlan says, and I should like to quote from an article by a person who is in a position to comment, I think very judically, on this question, about which, I think, there are misapprehensions. I should like to add my support to the view that is stated here. This is an article in Hibernia of May 27th by Dr. P. G. Walsh, Lecturer in Classics in the University of Edinburgh, and sometime of University College, Dublin. This is what he says about Lecturerships and advertisement:
The new system of College Lectureships was a tremendous advance. The charges made in the Dáil or elsewhere to the effect that they were reserved for sycophants, are infuriatingly unfair.
The suggestion that these posts should have been advertised is a misleading one.
That is the point Senator Quinlan was rightly making. The quotation continues:
Most of them were awarded to members of the Staff who had served for a probationary period as Assistants (in my case, for five years) and who had given tangible evidence of their value as teachers and researchers.
It would indeed be a very desirable practice if all initial appointments in all the Constituent Colleges were advertised.
That seems to be the point. The quotation goes on:
But an Assistant, once the probationary period has been served, has every right to expect that satisfactory service will be rewarded by a permanent Lectureship.
Again, that seems to me to be the truth. My experience of a University makes me see that is certainly a true, valid and constitutes a legitimate defence for the non-advertising of certain lectureship posts. I would not go all the way with Senator Quinlan. He seemed to think that where the field was very small, to advertise would in some way do harm. I do not think so. If there is only one candidate, it is better to advertise. There might be some competition. It would be better for the successful candidate to be able to say it was advertised. I think it is fairer to the candidate appointed, where there are invitations outside, for the post also to be advertised. It is not universally necessary, but it ought to be the rule rather than the exception, and certainly, in the initial stages.
In page 6 of the Report, reference is made to the statutory posts being sometimes not filled and this comment is made:
Counsel appearing on behalf of the College declined to give any reason for the decision to appoint College Lecturers and Assistant Lecturers, and did not attempt to justify these appointments on any meritorious basis.
I do not understand that. I do not see why the practice was not even defended. It is quite clear that not all statutory posts need to be filled, but the point should be made, I think, that if in the administration of the College, the pool of talent, as it were, the group of holders of statutory posts, is too small, then the actual day-to-day administration of the College may suffer, because if the pool of talent from which the administrators are to be chosen, these holders of statutory posts, gets smaller and smaller and older and older, the result may eventually have a stultifying effect. It has been said, and I have not really seen it denied, that the academic standards of University College, Dublin, are extremely high. I do not think anybody wants me to add my word to that. It is beyond question that the academic standards in the National University and in each of the Colleges, and notably I think in University College, Dublin, are of the highest.
I should like, however, to make one comment on the sort of defence made of, shall we say, administrative aberrations, on the grounds that scholarship is high. It is perfectly possible to be a very great scholar and a poor administrator. Anybody who knows anything about a University can think of a dozen examples of that. Scholarship is not enough.
I should like to quote Cardinal Newman on that very point. He is quoted again by Archbishop Walsh in the book I have referred to, on page 8:
There are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with little sensibility about their real relations towards each other. These may be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in the law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own place; I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in such attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If they are nothing but well-read men, or men of information, they have not what specially deserves the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type of Liberal Education.
That seems to me to be worth quoting in relation to the defence sometimes put forward that these administrators are all distinguished scholars. Scholarship is not enough.
I should like to come now specifically to what has been the result of the Report—the Bill, which I have already said is absolutely necessary. I think we must all recognise that, if we have read the Report. I sympathise with Senator Seán Ó Donnabháin when he says he would like to get it on the record, but it is all available, and it was printed in extenso in one of the papers, and large extracts appeared in the others.
I should like to make the point that it is really necessary to read the Report, to be acquainted with it, in order to see the full necessity for the Bill. I would make this one criticism of the Government—that it did not at once fully realise that: it did not make the Report available sufficiently early, well before the Dáil debate. My conviction is that if Deputy Dr. Browne and Deputy McQuillan had not intervened in the debate, the whole Bill might have gone through the Dáil in four and a half minutes. That would have been tragic, because if the Report is not read the whole necessity for the Bill would not be thoroughly understood, and the Government's attitude would be open to wide misinterpretation. However, the Minister has repaired that error and has now made the Report freely available.
At least we have had an opportunity of reading the Report: I hope most of us have read it. We can then see the necessity for the Bill. Without having read the Report, one might imagine that the Government were trying to force something on an unwilling University College. That view would have been strengthened by the kind of speeches made—talking about "interfering with University freedom". When we read the Report, we fully understand the necessity for the Bill.
The Bill has two separate objects. One is to validate the past, arising out of these errors, these aberrations. The other is to validate the future up to a period of four years. I see these as two separate objects. The first object is unexceptionable. It is absolutely certain that we must validate the past. Senator Hayes says there is nothing to it, but I disagree, the Government disagrees, and I think the majority of Senators disagree. It is absolutely necessary to validate these past actions. I am not so happy about the lengthy validation of the future. As I understand the Minister, his attitude is: "Clearly, until such time as we know how we ought to alter the Charter, it is only fair to let the University carry on as before; and as many of these posts are filled on a year to year basis it would be frightfully cumbersome now suddenly to ask the University Senate to fill I do not know how many posts. Therefore, unless we give them some time in the future we should not say: ‘We validate the past, but you must now work the Charter until we have changed it'".
The Government say in effect: "We will set up a commission. We have not yet decided on its terms of reference. We do not yet know who will sit on it. We assume that when we have done all these things, it will deliberate and report and perhaps make recommendations and the Government will consider these recommendations, and may decide to act upon them." How many years does that make? I do not know. I think it was in 1954 that the Council of Education produced its report as yet unacted on. I would be afraid it might be 10 years before the recommendations of this University Commission were acted upon.
Now, I do welcome the idea of the Commission, and I feel it is legitimate to validate the past; it is also legitimate to make things easy for University College in this coming year. We do not want to rush it and say: "You must now validate all the posts for the coming year by passing them to the University Senate, and so on." Therefore, a year's grace or possibly two years' is justifiable. Nobody wants to make it unnecessarily difficult. Surely it is reasonable, however, to ask that if the Charter has not been altered by the end of two years, then it could provisionally be followed again by University College, as it is by University College, Cork, and University College, Galway, and as it was followed by University College, Dublin, from 1908 to 1948.
Would it be imposing an intolerable burden to say: "If we have not altered the Charter by the end of two years would you mind making your appointments, until such time as we do alter it, under the Charter?"
Therefore, I would be inclined to move amendments on the Committee Stage for the deletion of paragraphs (c) and (d) of section 2, sub-section (3) of the Bill, which would have the effect of allowing two years' grace and not four years'.
I hope it has been possible for me, as I have striven to do, to comment in this way without being accused of hostility to University College, Dublin, which I think it is quite clear I have not got. It should be clear also that in fact it is the friends of University College, Dublin, and of the National University who welcome the new wind of change that is blowing therein. It is not people who are hostile who welcome the change therein, but, within the College and within the University as well as outside it, it is the friends of the National University who welcome the coming changes.
Yet, we find, at column 1118 of the Official Report of Dáil Éireann, this kind of thing being said by Deputy McGilligan:
The Catholic University system, as proposed for this country, has withstood many attacks. Those who founded it got the help of the Irish people after the Famine period, as the Minister for Education mentioned in the Belfield debate. The pennies of the famine-stricken poor of Ireland were collected to help Newman found the Catholic University, but the opposition to it has continued, and the lines of this debate have given great comfort to those who have been traditionally opposed to higher education for Irish Catholics.
Further down, he says:
But I do object to finding decent people in University College, Dublin, being dragged in by people following a lowdown tradition of opposition in regard to higher education for Irish Catholic people.
That sort of comment, I feel, is simply balderdash.
