I move:
That Seanad Éireann rejects any attempt by the Government and the Minister for Education to interfere with the governance and charter of Trinity College, Dublin, or to weaken the autonomy of the Colleges of the National University of Ireland.
I thank the Leader for making time available for this debate. I am sorry I only have ten minutes but I understand a number of people are contributing.
Last Friday the people voted by a narrow majority to amend the Constitution to give their fellow citizens the right to remarry. The result was an affirmation that the Irish people wish our society to be open, non-coercive and pluralist. The Minister for Education left nobody in any doubt of her commitment to those values. How can it be, therefore, that the pluralism and liberalism espoused by the Minister and her colleagues last week is glaringly absent in the proposals for university legislation published this week? There is control where there should be freedom and there is statism where there should be autonomy.
There are many references and fine words in the document, such as openness, dialogue, autonomy and independence, the universities making decisions themselves and strengthening academic freedom, etc. It all looks and sounds good, even convincing, but we should not be taken in. Under the camouflage of these liberal words, the Minister is proposing an unwarranted intrusion into areas where the State has no business. An already over-centralised State now proposes to spread its all ensnaring tentacles even further.
The Minister stated the position paper sets out her own thinking and that the advice of the heads of the universities does not imply their agreement with the proposals in the document. I am sure they will be most relieved to hear that. Does the Minister believe they would agree with the following statement: "The White Paper indicates there would be statutory provision for ministerial nominees on all governing bodies"? Does she think the heads would agree with her assertions that "It is accepted that this institutional framework cannot be totally unconstrained" or "Where the governing body opts to be chaired by a person other than the president or provost, that person would be appointed by the Government from three nominees, at least one of whom would be a woman, selected by the governing body itself"?
The coup de grâce is the following statement: “The Government would have the power to dissolve the governing body for stated reasons and for a temporary period no longer than one year.” Would this be before or after the provost and the president had given “evidence to the Committee of public Accounts of the Dáil when required by the committee to do so”? We have now reached the point of the university as a semi-State company; so much for liberalism and pluralism.
The merit I see in the Minister's approach is the creation of autonomous universities to replace the constituent colleges of the NUI, the designation of NUI degrees and the proposals in respect of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, and the University of Limerick. Political interference is anathema to the idea of a university. The tired cliché of elitism will be used as an excuse to interfere, but there is a huge difference between social elitism and the intellectual elitism of our universities. The more people can enjoy that elitism by participating in it and the more diversity of thought and learning is protected, the better it will be for our society.
Tomorrow President Clinton will look across College Green at the facade of Trinity College, Dublin. He will see Burke and Goldsmith and 400 years of history. Would this powerful Rhodes Scholar do to Harvard or his English alma mater what the Minister has in mind for Trinity College, Dublin? I do not think so. I am not a graduate of Trinity College but I regard it as one of the most outstanding places of learning on this island and my view is confirmed by independent assessment. What is it about Trinity College, Dublin, that makes the Minister believe it has failed as an autonomous body? What needs fixing? I ask the Minister to reply to these questions.
What is the legal justification for her proposals for Trinity College, Dublin? Is she confident she is on firm constitutional ground? Some lawyers suggest otherwise. In the week when the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have advanced the cause of peace, surely the Minister must know she is sending entirely the wrong signal to many people in Northern Ireland, particularly the many whose principal exposure to life in the Republic was education at Trinity College, Dublin. The one institution in the South to which Unionists have strong loyalties is entitled to parity of esteem. Are the proposals for Trinity College, Dublin, consistent with the spirit of the Downing Street Declaration?
There has been much consultation since the Progressive Democrats motion was tabled in the Seanad. There have been reports in the press of "watering down", "concessions", "modifications" and the Minister "learning her lesson". This is all part of a softening up process. Execution becomes almost desirable in these circumstances. A 400 year uninterrupted history is over.
It appears the much vaunted consultation goes just so far. When was the last time the Minister had contact with the Irish Federation of University Teachers? Is it possible the Labour Party could omit the trade unions from the consultation process on which the Minister congratulates herself in the proposals document? The general secretary of the union told a meeting in Trinity College, Dublin, that he will seek a meeting with the Taoiseach and Tánaiste if the Minister continues to ignore him.
The Minister has had a four month media campaign to soften up the universities. Does she really want us to believe she knows more about the running of the college of Beckett, Swift, Burke, Grattan, Davis, Berkeley and Tone than those who have run the place down the centuries and seen off monarchs, war and rebellion? Is the Fine Gael Party's silence on Trinity College, Dublin, a sign of consent to the Minister's proposals or one of embarrassment? Is Senator Ross the only one person prepared to dissent? Will the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, Deputy Yates, send officials from the Department to attend IFA council meetings? How would the Taoiseach react to people being placed on the board of Clongowes Wood College? This is the logical extension of the argument.
There is an accountability in Trinity College, Dublin, and elsewhere and it involves the following: if degrees are substandard and the education and management are defective, it will not be long before the students stay away, the employers will ignore the graduates, the best academics will leave and the endowments will dry up. The O'Reilly building or Smurfit school will find other homes. This is real accountability in action. The Minister may by all means introduce legislation on Maynooth and the new universities, but why impose unwanted and unnecessary red tape and political control on areas of university life that should be left alone?
UCC's budget last year was £55 million — I presume the University Panel Senators will deal with this aspect in more detail. It has 1,500 staff, making it one of the biggest and most secure employers in the south. Less than half of the £55 million came as a grant from the State and the no fee régime means the college will rely on the State for nearly 80 per cent of its total budget. The vice-president of UCC says this runs counter to the declared intentions of our European partners and we are swimming against the tide. Delivering the 1995 John Marcus O'Sullivan memorial lecture, the vice-president, Professor Brendan O'Mahony, said the following:
The greatest threat to the university's academic freedom comes from the intrusion of the State in the affairs of the university ... one can detect a market tendency on the part of the Department of Education toward centralised control and to model new university legislation on the more recently introduced regional technical college system. [He went on to say:] Any proposed changes which reflect increased policing by the Government Departments beg such questions as: who are the experts? Are all the "responsible" ones in Government Departments? What has become of the much vaunted principle of subsidiarity? What have the universities been doing wrong to warrant an intrusion on their hitherto autonomous state? Why introduce another layer of bureaucratic/ administrative control? Is the university to become a semi-State body, an arm of the State, under the control of successive Ministers for Education?
These questions require answers. The comments of Professor Vincent McBriarty of Trinity College, Dublin, delivering the R.M. Jones Memorial Lecture in Queen's University, Belfast, are also worth noting: "The universities have been subjected to a mandatory culture of compliance". He also stated:
Because of the strategic role of higher education in today's society, governments have exercised a vested interest in shaping the future direction of universities. Their arm's length approach has generally been tailored to meet the immediate needs of society as they see them. The net effect is that not alone is the ethos of the university ignored, but the policies adopted have threatened to destroy it altogether, with a slow but sustained drift towards "supermarket" education.
I have a salutary warning for the Minister:
After one or two sessions, after strong speeches in Parliament from Secretaries of State and experimentalists in education, and committees, gatherings, and manifestos on the part of members of the Colleges, it was owned by friends of the Government, that its attempt upon them was a mistake and a failure and the sooner Government gave it up, the better for the Government.
The Minister should reflect on those words of John Henry Cardinal Newman, which were written in 1856, when she is preparing the final draft of the Bill on the universities. I hope the Bill will be introduced in the Seanad. I commend the motion to the House and I ask it to adopt it.