I move amendment No. 1:
In page 2, line 21 after "institution" to insert "including an institution dealing primarily with postgraduate education and research".
I have suggested this amendment because, having listened to the debate on a similar suggestion on Committee Stage and having read the report of it subsequently, I was not satisfied that I had got the point I wished to make clearly across to the Members of the House and, perhaps, even to the Minister. My previous amendment on Committee Stage referred to postgraduate students. The Minister, quite reasonably, said that the Higher Education Authority would have within their sphere of operations and interest in postgraduate students. The institutions of higher education that deal with undergraduate students have, of course, an increasing interest in postgraduate students. One cannot separate one from the other. Therefore, the Higher Education Authority must deal with postgraduate students in these institutions anyway.
As I said on Second Stage I was more concerned about certain institutions which have a primary and direct responsibility for postgraduate education and training and have not got any undergraduate students. These institutions are becoming increasingly important, particularly in the professional areas. They are very important in medicine and are becoming more important in engineering also. The institutions concerned have two functions: first, to regulate the standards of practice in the professions and, secondly, to prepare people for practice in certain specialist areas of the professions. They do this by organising courses and arranging examinations. These courses may be partly taken in the universities, where they will be covered by the operations of the Higher Education Authority, but very often they are taken in the institutions themselves.
I want it to be quite clear from the Bill, when it becomes an Act, that the Higher Education Authority has no discretion about whether or not it should entertain an approach from one of these institutions to be considered as rating perhaps for a grant under this Bill. I know that there is in the public mind a definite degree of confusion about these places. In the past they have not been very active in their operations, but in the future they are going to be increasingly active; indeed, their activity is increasing at the moment. If they are not catered for in this way, the interests of the community at large will suffer, because these bodies will not be able to carry out their functions in regulating the standards of people who are practising in the professions concerned. The amendment is a reasonable one. I do not want to delay unduly the course of the Bill through the Oireachtas, but I am quite satisfied that the Higher Education Authority must have quite clearly within its zone of operation the institutions about which I am thinking which may not have any undergraduate responsibilities at all but have definite responsibilities for education and training in the postgraduate area.