This debate has now ranged over the whole problem and the whole field of University education in our country. There are really two separate matters which have come up in this debate. Properly speaking, one should have been postponed until the Minister has taken the further measures which he has indicated he will take, namely, measures in regard to the whole question of our higher education. The other is the narrower one, the immediate consideration of this Estimate, the provision of funds to meet the immediate and long-term needs of University College, Dublin. Although the first question is one for the future, it has been touched upon by Deputy Dr. Browne in a manner that demands some comment before this debate closes.
First of all, I wonder if people who talk about the integration of our Universities and who seem to say that, particularly in Dublin, Universities should be integrated, have thought as deeply on the problem as they might like to think they have done, because in this question there are two elements which simply cannot be brushed aside in the consideration of the problem. One element is, if you like, a spiritual one, a matter of the mind; the other element is a very concrete one, the question of capacity. But if you take it on either score, you can dispose of the argument that we should amalgamate the University institutions already in Dublin. It was said proudly, and I understand the pride of Deputy Dillon when he referred to it, just as I can understand the pride of the Minister and others of us who are graduates of that University, how much tradition and how much background matter.
The National University of Ireland was not merely a growth of something required for modern times, to give us a material education. The National University of Ireland, with all its shortcomings, was the outcome of a tradition, a frustrated tradition, the outcome of all the feelings of Irish nationality in the 19th century which every effort was made to kill. This was the century when, following the imposition of the Union, every effort was made in the educational sphere to concentrate, through such things as the system of primary schools and the killing of the language, on destroying us as a people. Nevertheless, the end of that century saw the move of our people not only to fight the very pressing material battle of the time but also to fight the battle for the freedom and development of the spirit. No apology need be made, nor is it bigotry to refer to it.
There is not an Irish Catholic graduate who is not in his heart proud to be a graduate of a University that was founded by our people and of the fact that they were led by our Hierarchy in their struggle to found it. It is no harm to say these things because we are proud of them. Therefore, in our University, there is at its root a tradition of sound and faithful Irish nationalism, a spiritual and philosophical tradition, something not to be brushed aside by materialistic or socialistic considerations. These things of the spirit do matter. They are the philosophy behind the outlook of the University Colleges in the National University. Are we to be asked to sacrifice these?
I have spoken for our University. Perhaps it will not be taken amiss if I comment on the other. As Deputy Dr. Browne has said, it is right that we should discuss these things in the House. I shall also agree with him that the Tuairim report was a perfectly proper matter to discuss. But in regard to the University of Dublin, have they not got their traditions, too? If we were to ask his University of Dublin to do so, would they throw their traditions over? They have different origins, different traditions, a different continuity of history and they are different in the things of the mind, too. Anybody who sees in a University something more than a technical school or an institution for the training of professionals, anybody who thinks about it will see the fundamental distinction between the institution of the National University, which has three constituent Colleges, and the institution of Dublin University with one constituent College, Trinity College. Before I go to the material aspect, I am prepared to say that, even with their divergent backgrounds, traditions and fundamental philosophies, if you like, there is a role for both Universities to play and there is much that both can do for our people and our country. Therefore, I can accept these premises, as the Minister did in the speech he made introducing this Estimate. More specifically with regard to the existence of two Colleges in the city of Dublin, is it very realistic to suggest the amalgamation of these two Colleges into one, no matter what their University background is? Let us take the things canvassed abroad, sometimes by some people who do not think very deeply into these matters. Is it a practical proposition to amalgamate both these institutions? I shall answer straight away: only if you restrict entry, restrict the number of students and restrict your University activities.
I know the argument has not been made in this House but I know there are some people outside who will more or less cynically say: "There already are too many University graduates." That kind of thing is not to be taken very seriously. Short of saying you must have limitation, I think you will have to face up to the fact you will need at least two Colleges in Dublin, anyway, whatever their University background. Do not be fooled by people talking about two Universities where one should do. Do not confuse it with the question of how many University Colleges you should have. They are two distinctly different things.
It is all right, referring to London, to say there is only one University, but there are a number of University Colleges. You can have a number of University Colleges in a University. I ask: are two University Colleges too much for Dublin? I do not think so. On the rather interesting figures supplied to us by the Minister, by the Commission's report, by the Tuairim report and the other information available to us, it seems to me that at least this comes, out of it: there is a case for two University Colleges here; in fact, you cannot do with less than two University Colleges in Dublin.
All right—will you suggest closing the University Colleges in Cork or Galway? I think an examination of that problem will also show that there is at least justification for the existing University Colleges in Cork and Galway. If, therefore, we come to the conclusion, and I want to stress this, that we cannot do without two University Colleges in Dublin, the alternative would be one colossus here. You would not be able to cater for the demand and organisation would force you to break down into what would be effectively two Colleges, if you take the student population of the two institutions in Dublin. If you are to have two Colleges in Dublin, and a College in Cork and Galway, you really have no problem in regard to how many Universities you have. You can carry on very nicely as you are.
When you take into account the traditional and other aspects of the matter to which the Minister referred in his speech and to which Dr. Browne referred from the other point of view, I personally can see no reason for confusing this issue with the suggestion of amalgamating the Colleges in Dublin. With its traditions, the University we have can cater for three of our Colleges and the University of Dublin can remain and flourish on its own. To say that to the extent to which I have said it is, perhaps, labouring the point, but I do not think we can approach this problem if we do not get clear in our minds what Colleges we require. I make no comment whatever on the claims of any other city to have a College for the simple reason that I have not the facts upon which I could express myself definitely.
There are obviously abroad two contradictory points of view, one suggesting the establishment of additional Colleges in other centres and the other suggesting we have already too much University duplication. Very good. We shall have to approach the narrow part of this Estimate from the point of view that we must have two University Colleges in Dublin. It is vitally important that University College, Dublin, which has justified its existence, and to which I shall refer more specifically in a moment, should have the facilities it needs for its proper development. After all, it is representative of a very large portion of our population and of our student population.
Before going more narrowly into that question, perhaps I might touch on one other point which has reason in it and to which reference was made by Deputy Dr. Browne. Although I feel Dr. Browne has confused the question of the two Universities and although I know I would completely differ with him on the question of the importance of tradition, when he raises the question of elaborate facilities of certain types I believe he has a point. Under modern conditions, certain technical equipment may be too expensive to duplicate. There may also be a question of certain specialisations but these are ordinary problems of what I might call co-ordination. There are instances to be found already of the working out of these things. These problems do not go basically or radically to the root of the problem which we have to discuss on this Estimate, namely, the problem of facilities available to University College, Dublin.
There is a considerable amount of academic intercourse at present in that way. Possibly there may be more in the future. I know as a fact that if there is a piece of important equipment available to only one institution —this goes beyond Universities, in fact —if we have in the country a piece of equipment that is needed, I have never heard of its not being made available to another interest that legitimately wants to use it. I do not think that the fundamental question of the two Universities is in any way affected by any reasonable approach to the question of sharing certain facilities that cannot be duplicated. Strictly speaking, this matter does not arise on this Estimate.
Coming back to U.C.D., Deputies may quite properly feel they have a big responsibility in dealing with this Estimate and there is a large sum of money involved. It is also quite right, I think, that the pros and cons that have been argued outside the House in this matter should be adverted to when the decision is being made in this House. These matters may be crystallised perhaps in two reports—the Commission's Report and the Tuairim Report. Incidentally, I should like to make this remark about another speaker referring to people who act on Commissions: I agree completely that it is not sufficient answer to us in this House to say we have a Commission's report. We are entitled to, and we should as is our right and our duty, read and criticise it constructively, but I think it is not proper to make disparaging remarks about people who give their time and do their best on commissions and if ever a commission worked objectively and tried to find the facts and do its job to the best of its ability, this commission did. It is going a little too far to express opinions that people are “nuts”, or anything like that. I think we are hardly fair to people who do this type of work when we tend to disparage them and suggest that they have not examined this or that aspect of the matter. We should give them credit for examining all aspects that should have been examined, especially if there is evidence in the report. We should of course criticise any omissions and disagree with any recommendations that are made, if we feel we should do so.
In regard to U.C.D. we must realise that it was in a unique position in the sense that, of all our University institutions, it started off with the worst handicaps and had to grapple with certain problems that had not to be faced in the same degree by our other Colleges. We must face the fact that fighting to achieve and to maintain standards, and keep step with four other University Colleges in the country was not very easy in the expanded position of U.C.D. If we go back a little on the history of the College, it is not hard to understand why. U.C.D. had its origins in the semi-abortive attempt to set up a University in Newman's time. That experiment had failed in all aspects except the Medical School. Therefore, when the new College did come into being with the establishment of the National University in Dublin, you had merely a scattered, rudimentary accommodation voluntarily acquired without much resources in the Earlsfort Terrace area. You had the very inadequate accommodation of the Medical School in Cecilia Street.
That is the basis on which U.C.D. was established. In its establishment, it had not only to compete with the other University, Trinity College, but also with the College of Science which technologically and in many ways was in a better position, perhaps, to deal with technical subjects in those days than U.C.D. was.
U.C.D. grew on that tenuous foundation by getting the Earlsfort Terrace site and doing its best there and later, under the first Government here, it got the College of Science, the rere half of the block we know as Government Buildings. It is to be noted here that, from the accommodation point of view, U.C.D. was founded in a backyard, one might say, and it had to live from hand-to-mouth as it grew up.
On the other hand, thanks to the vigour of the tradition behind it, to the devotion and the quality of its foundation staff and later staffs and to the fact that it got the support of Irish students, mainly because it could give them the education which they sought, it rapidly became, in every sense of the word, a full University College, the graduates from which could take their place as to academic qualifications, the excellence of their degrees, their general knowledge and technical proficiency on international standards, with the graduates of any other University here or in England.
When you take into account that in Dublin already there was an old University of very considerable reputation, a University which is justly proud of itself, in Trinity College—in its own tradition, I hasten to add but, nevertheless, a University of very high reputation and high achievement in the 19th Century—and that, later, the development of Queen's University in Belfast was one that kept pace and in some respects outdid many universities on the other side of the Irish Sea, and consider the situation and the handicaps of University College, Dublin, one can only marvel, and I think history will marvel, at its success. Its outstanding success is to be attributed to a combination of its tradition, its high standards and the quality of its professors, lecturers and administrators.
By contrast with University College, Dublin, University College, Cork, and University College, Galway, had a certain advantage because they were already Queen's Colleges founded and functioning as such colleges, with some recognition behind them. They had a relatively easy task of establishment, although, let me hasten to add, lest anyone should think I was suggesting that they had not their problems, all four of our University Colleges have their problems in this modern world. The four University Colleges in this part of Ireland have their problems in keeping abreast with standards in every sense, with University life and University development, particularly across the water, which would be the nearest standard, in keeping abreast with the other University in this island, Queen's College, Belfast, with its development and its endowment. I do not want to disparage University College, Dublin, but its situation was so much the worse in its being scattered, its remedies being ad hoc at every stage and, then, let us face the real fact, whereas in Galway and Cork even — and they certainly have their disabilities, too—you at least had University Colleges that were some kind of units, the poor college in Dublin was scattered or never really placed with proper housing.
I hope to come to the actual terms of the motion in a moment and I think I should try to answer some of the points made by Deputy Dr. Browne in that connection, but, before I come to that, I think this opportunity should be taken to look a little more closely at the problems of University College, Dublin.
We are talking about unity and getting unity in Belfield and some people talk about breaking the unity there is already in the centre of the city. But what unity have you in the centre of the city? In my time as an undergraduate, you had the Medical School in Cecilia Street and you came to Earlsfort Terrace where you had Arts, Law and some of the Science Faculty, and then you had to come down to Merrion Street to get the other part of the Science Faculty and the Engineering Faculty and the students had to come and go between the lot.
Let me point out that it was not a question of having Faculties in separate buildings. You had the position that remains up to this very day, that the Faculties are split. If it were the situation say, that you had the whole Science Faculty in Merrion Street, it would not be quite so bad. Reference was made by Deputy Dr. Browne to the half-mile, the inconvenience of moving from Earlsfort Terrace down to the College of Science. Take a first year student. He does Physics in Earlsfort Terrace and Chemistry in the College of Science and he may have to rush back for another lecture in Earlsfort Terrace, and so on.
We must really face the fact that, as things are and have been, the situation in regard to accommodation was thoroughly and completely unsatisfactory and that there was a make-do situation which militated the whole way through against the proper functioning of University College, Dublin, at all. I certainly feel that this matter should have been remedied long ago but it is easy to say that. There are other problems to be met in solving a problem like that and, let us be frank about it, there are always for Governments political problems also in these matters.
Before dealing with the site problem, I have indicated the real nature of the accommodation problem but I instance the Science Faculty. I should like, in anticipation of another debate possibly, and with relation to this, to refer to the problem that science has posed for our Universities in our day. The Minister has touched on the point. Deputy Dr. Browne has adverted to the question of equipment in regard to it. But the real precipitating factor in this case is largely the question of the training of science graduates and engineering graduates and facilities for them. I do not think that that can be disposed of completely on the basis of accommodation and the general aspect of it has a very great bearing on the question of accommodation and the urgency of making available accommodation not only adequate to numbers but accommodation adequate in every sense to the demands of University science in modern times.
The importance of the role of science, of course, in our modern Universities, for us, is one that many people discant on from many angles but we should bear in mind that our Universities have a very big role to play in this field, particularly for a small country. Not only is there a problem of turning out the technical graduates, the science graduates, we need and maintaining the adequate standards of knowledge we need, but there is the problem of our Universities as advice and thinking centres, particularly in scientific matters, in a country like this.
This is not the time to go into the difference between the approach to science in a University and the approach to science in a technological institute but it is the time to point out that our Universities in this country will have to play a role that is supplemented in other countries by big industrial undertakings.
We must look to our Universities for such research facilities as we need. I am not advocating that our Universities should be merely local institutes of research, narrowly tied down to the immediate problems of Irish industry or Irish agriculture. I know how important free fundamental research is and without any qualification I would claim for our Universities the prerogative to do that. However, in mere training in research, in the mere keeping of a research organisation going, our Universities are playing an essential role in modern times. In other greater industrial countries, that need can be supplied to a large extent by other technical institutes which we cannot afford to maintain particularly for industry, and we have no industry of the size which would retain these research institutions and compete with the Universities.
For such research, you need two things: first of all, the person who is to direct and work in such an organisation needs deep training in the modern scientific sense. He cannot get that training, theoretical and practical, without getting the education for it. When he has got it, he must be to a large extent held in some type of employment and he can be held. In this country, only our Universities can supply such a base. The aim of our Universities then has to be to produce graduates with a wide and deep knowledge of their own subject, capable of doing research, and having a scientific education, as one professor put it, enabling him to deal with the technology and the demands of tomorrow rather than the technology of to-day. Where can we maintain such people? We can train and maintain them only in our University Colleges.
These two things, the freedom of research the Universities should have, and the importance of fundamental research, strictly speaking, do not come into this debate, but I mention them here in order to save myself from the charge that I was merely looking at this question from a narrow, utilitarian point of view. Having said that, I wish to refer to another role which, given the facilities, our Universities can play. When research problems and advice problems are met in industry, in agriculture or in any other field, it is to our Universities we look and the only place to which we can turn to get that advice and assistance.
To illustrate what I am saying, I shall go back to the time of the last war. During the war, we found ourselves, quite suddenly, with a number of industrial and supply problems, whether it was the problem of trying to carbonise turf or trying to make phosphorus for the match industry, or something else. Generally speaking, the processes for making some of these things were known, but one thing was proved, that no technician, no professional scientist, certainly no research worker, could be trained merely out of books.
You learned the "know-how" only by experience in the laboratory or in the workshop. When it comes to practical problems involving research, you have to get down to the reality: there has to be experimentation. There has to be equipment and experience to enable you to use that equipment. That was brought home to us in regard to various projects—and they were very modest projects—that it was inevitable that some experimental and scientific research would be involved, and one did not get very far with any of the problems before one came up against the necessity for a high degree of scientific knowledge and a considerable degree of expertness and familiarity with the direction and execution of experimental research.
Therefore, when these problems occur, whether in emergency time or in ordinary peacetime, where can we look for a solution? Are we to export that problem for solution elsewhere? If not, where can we look for its solution. The answer is obvious: we turn to our Universities and there we shall find two things, a readymade organisation with some experience in dealing with such problems and the prerequisite basic scientific knowledge.
It is very significant to note in relation to the emergency, that the people who came in to direct these efforts were largely members of University staffs, University lecturers and professors, and then, in almost every case afterwards, University graduates with research experience.
Apart from teaching science graduates and giving modern training, our Science Faculties have thus another big role to play. Although I have digressed on that, we should realise what is involved and the extent to which that problem has a bearing on the urgency of the move to Belfield. The situation is at breaking point in the Science departments in University College, Dublin, in spite of the devoted and extremely energetic efforts of the professors and administrators involved.
I am tempted to refer at this stage to the Tuairim report and one of the reasons I personally cannot accept it now, but I think I had better leave that to its logical position at the end, and continue on the science schools.
In our science schools, we have the problem of teaching undergraduates, of training graduates in research, and I hope it will be taken for granted that the teaching of our graduates to international standards is a necessity. I also hope I have indicated the importance of the role of research in our Universities. A University which does not do research in modern times is hardly a University at all— that is one of the things they are there for.
The second problem is that of staff; the third is of equipment and library; and the fourth, which we are dealing with here, is the problem of building. I have dealt with the problem of teaching and research and perhaps I should say—and this may be a sobering thought for many of us—that not only are our Science Faculties sorely pressed in the matter of doing any research at all, but the professors are seriously perturbed about the difficulty of maintaining international standards. Heretofore in University College, Dublin; University College, Galway and University College Cork, we have been able to maintain these international standards, as judged from the fact that the external examiners who adjudicate at examinations and without whose concurrence no degree can be given, come from British Universities and other Universities abroad. They come also from Dublin University and from Belfast, and our professors are accepted as extern examiners in other Universities elsewhere.
I say this deliberately, and I think it is a matter of grave concern, that thanks to the combination of the problems of staff, equipment and space, the thing most on the minds of the professors in our University Colleges is the problem of maintaining international standards to ensure that the graduate, particularly the honours graduate who leaves a Science Faculty in any of our Universities, has got the full training as well as the full knowledge required by international standards. In other words, it is a question of the standard of our degrees which has been nobly maintained by our University staffs up to the moment.
I think this House would be very perturbed if there were any suggestion that the standard of our degrees was in danger because the implications of that are too frightening. It would mean, first of all, that an Irish graduate abroad would be regarded as second-rate, and has other implications which anyone with an ounce of brains can work out for himself. Straight away, I adopt the attitude that we cannot allow the standard of our degrees to deteriorate and, if that is so, we have to grapple with a problem which is extremely urgent, and none the less urgent because the disaster has been staved off by the magnificent work done by the professors leading the various schools in the Faculties of Science in our University Colleges.
As I say, there are three main problems and one is staff. If we are to maintain standards and have the research facilities I spoke of, we shall have to deal with staff, equipment and buildings. We have been very fortunate in the standard of our professors in the National University of Ireland. Looking back on the history of the National University in its Dublin College, one example of its extraordinary success and viability is the standard of professors which it has had, such as the late Professor Hugh Ryan, professors who were renowned in their research work as well as in developing their own departments.
That standard is all the more extraordinary in that one might say the College came into being in a haphazard way, and yet could command professors of the quality which it had at its inception, and continue to maintain that standard in the quality of its professors during the past 50 years. These professors have been wrestling vigorously with day to day administrative problems and still have managed to keep their research going and the standards of their degrees up to the highest level. I think that is a great tribute to them, and one which we can all justifiably pay to them. However, I was about to point to the urgency of the measure we are advocating today.
We should advert to the fact that our University professors have two very difficult staff problems. First, there is the question of the number they need to do their job. When I was an undergraduate about 30 years ago, the Physics Department in University College, Dublin had a professor, two lecturers, one or two assistants and a number of student demonstrators. It was a small staff adequate to the number of students but a very important factor to remember is that that was in the days before the modern developments in physics. We were still in an age when so-called classical physics was sufficient.
In the Chemistry Department of U.C.D., to the best of my memory, at that time, there were two professors but one had been taken over from the College of Science, two or three lecturers and a few demonstrators. The school was small but in both cases significant and important research was being done. Some very good students were being turned out; there was publication; and the standards of degrees were high. Since that time, there has been such a development in the subject that there has to be a multiplication of staff. In other words, the staff that got by, even for the same number of students as that time, will not do now because the field has become so expanded. A graduate who went through the Physics Department in, let us say, 1930, would be lost as far as the breadth of the subject in certain fields is concerned now. Consequently, we need more lecturers and more specialists. In other words, we need a bigger academic team to deal with the problem.
The first problem a professor has is the development of the subject over the past 30 years and present day staff must cater for a greater number of students. I have a note—I do not know if I can put my hand on it now— of the actual numbers in the chemistry department. It is rather instructive. Thirty years ago, you would have had one physical chemistry lecturer. Physical chemistry, as a subject, has grown so wide today that a number of people are required to cater for the subject alone, to say nothing of catering for the students. Multiply that then by whatever factor is necessary as representing the increase in student membership and you will see at once the appalling problem that faces the staffs of our Universities. You see at once how many more are needed and the quality that is required.
Then, of course, one comes up immediately against the biggest bugbear of all, the question of remuneration. This may be wandering from the immediate substance of the Estimate but the debate has been enlarged somewhat to embrace the whole concept of University education. We must face the fact that we have a problem here and, in the last analysis, it will come back to our building problem. We have the problem of supplying our Universities and their professorial staffs with their potential successors in the future and, in the present, the staff they require to run their departments, staff of such a standard as to ensure that there will be no deterioration in research and in the maintenance of adequate research and teaching standards. Above all, we must have such staff as will be able to cope with the ever-increasing student intake.
What I am about to say now should be of interest to those who think we are turning out too many graduates. I have some statistics in relation to the professional chemist. One gets an indication of the numbers from the membership of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. As Fellows, associates, or graduates, there are approximately 20,000 professional chemists. Not all of those members are in England, admittedly, but one can see from that how very large the number is. I have here, too, particulars of the remuneration paid in the teaching institutes. It seems to me that a professional chemist employed in a University can expect on an average—many do much better— £1,000 per year at 30 years of age; by the time he is 40, he will be earning £2,000 a year; at 50 years of age, he will be in receipt of £2,300 roughly. That is the average standard of professional remuneration for a trained chemist. Remuneration for trained physicists will be at the same level because of the demand for physicists in modern scientific conditions.
One of the big problems we have to face then in all our Universities is the problem of attracting and holding the brilliant graduate with a flair for research and a flair for academic life, so that his potentialities may be harnessed to reproduce the technical knowledge required. When the salary scales are compared, one inevitably grows a little perturbed as to the chances of getting such graduates to stay. One of the problems besetting many a University professor is the problem of the promising graduate who goes away to get experience. A certain amount of foreign experience is essential in specialisation. As well as that, it is a good thing to have some coming and going. The real problem is to get the brilliant graduate to come back, and if he does come back, to hold him. From what I have said earlier, it is obvious that there is not much hope of paying more. Indeed, if one decides to pay more, that is just another problem on top of the problems I have already mentioned.
Most people of that calibre would be prepared to work at their own subject for, perhaps, less. I remember one case in my own student days. I knew a very brilliant man who was working for a pittance in one of our Universities simply because he loved his work. But it is scarcely reasonable to expect people to make such a sacrifice right through life merely for the advantage of working in their own locale. And such brilliant prospects offer elsewhere.
Another of the worst problems facing University professors is that of facilities for research and the proper training of students. There are really no adequate facilities. Some professors have to do their teaching work twice over. Classes which should have run together have to be broken up. A professor will take a practical class in physics and chemistry. If he has accommodation for 100 students, he can bring them into a lecture theatre and give them a lecture there. They can then go to the laboratory and do the practical work with the help of demonstrators. If he has 200 students, he cannot do that. He must give the lecture twice over. He must organise for the one class twice. Now, I admit 100 is a rather large figure. I took it merely for the purposes of illustration.
The brilliant student, the brilliant graduate, is our investment for the future. Not only does the question of remuneration arise but, more particularly, the question of facilities for research arises. Both are needed to attract and hold him. There is all the unnecessary drudgery of duplication of teaching effort because of lack of accommodation. These are the problems that militate against our professors in the organisation of their classes, in securing the best staff and, above all, in research work. I can assure the House that these are very real problems in the technical departments of University College, Dublin.
The next problem that arises is the question of equipment. One can look at this from several different angles. One can look at it from the point of view of the man actively engaged in research, from the point of view of the teacher and from the point of view of the student who wishes to be trained. Having ensured the adequate potential in brains, one has to find out the best way in which to get the adequate potential in material.
The problem in relation to University College, Dublin, is so acute that, having the apparatus, it is a question of finding a place in which to use it; it is a question of finding a space in which to do research; and it is a question of being able to leave one's apparatus long enough assembled in the one spot—a point to which the Minister adverted in his speech. It is a question of having one's apparatus long enough assembled to get satisfactory work out of it.
If anyone doubts me when I say the position is acute, I am sure one quick visit could be arranged with the President of the College. It is fantastic, but I have heard of a case where it was decided not to get certain equipment; there was no sense in getting it because there was no place in which to put it.
It is a very real problem because, whether it is for the graduates doing research work, the professor himself, or the honours student who is doing work for his final year in the honours course, the apparatus is set up, and kept set up for considerable periods of time, if it worth setting up at all. Research is not done by going into a class for two or three hours a day. It involves continuous weeks and months, and it might take years to pursue a problem. That means the apparatus and the facilities must stand where they are in the place allocated to them for long periods. It has actually happened in University College, Dublin, that owing to a shortage of space required for teaching and research, people have been compelled to dismantle their apparatus and put it up again. That is completly inefficient and fantastic.
I am pointing this out to show that the problem of accommodation goes together with the question of the maintenance of the degree standards. The degree standards will depend on the excellence of the teaching and facilities and if the standards fall, and the excellence of the school deteriorates, then the potential graduate will not come to the University. Let us look at the terrible consequences of letting the standards fall. It would mean that brilliant young Irish boys who knew they had a future in science in some way or another, would go to some other University and, therefore, our own University would attract only the second best. That is the danger we are running into. Accommodation has a vital bearing on the problem and we must not overlook it.
I shall refer now in passing—before I go on to the final question of buildings—to the question of technical and laboratory assistants and library facilities which are so important for the students or for the graduate who is doing post-graduate research work for a higher degree. In my own time, I saw a very brilliant research student who had come back from a studentship abroad—he was one of the best-trained graduates which University College produced and one of the most brilliant—waste the best part of a year glass-blowing because there was not the technical assistant there to do it for him.
Space for technicians and technologists in the College is vitally necessary. How can they work if there is not space? The same applies to library facilities. One has only to look at the problem of Galway or Dublin with regard to library facilities. If anyone doubts what I am saying, or thinks I am exaggerating in the least, he has only to look at the Report of the Commission on Accommodation Needs of the Constituent Colleges of the National University of Ireland. I shall not delay the House but shall merely mention some of the pages. If you look at page 14 of the Report, you will see the disadvantage of the separation from Merrion Street discussed. If you look at page 15, you will see an observation like this:—
Many engineering operations can be conducted more conveniently and more safely in the open air. This applies particularly to pilot plant experiments in chemical engineering. Large hydraulic models can also be made in the open, and for this kind of work a large yard or working space should adjoin the engineering school.
Need I add, there are no such facilities in University College, Dublin. On page 25 of the Report of the Commission we read:—
The provision in the estimate for postgraduate research is limited. We saw enough of research facilities in English and Danish Universities in the sciences to say that in this field the University lags a long way behind. In our opinion—and for economic not less than for academic reasons—members of university staffs and post-graduate students will have to be afforded opportunities for research, and accommodation provided for it. More than ever the standards of to-day are international standards.
I am quoting at random because I do not want to delay the House by giving too great detail. That refers to University College, Dublin, but if anybody doubts that there is a problem in Cork, they should read the Report with regard to Cork. One of the most urgent things in Cork and Galway is to have the staff and the facilities to do a four years' honours course. These facilities have to be maintained in order to provide the standards and it is as vitally necessary for them to maintain the standards as it is for University College, Dublin.
The Galway situation is, in many respects, I might say, pathetic, in the matter of accommodation. One professor had to go so far as to say that he thought the professor of mathematics and physics should have a room with a blackboard! If that is not a note of extreme urgency, I do not know what is. At page 97 of the Report of the Commission a professor of chemistry is reported as saying:
...A most undesirable feature of the overcrowding in this class—
He was referring to the third year class—
—is that final-year students must work in pairs during a most important part of their training. It is generally agreed that a Four-Year B.Sc. is desirable and the longer Course has been provided in University College, Dublin, during the past 10 years. The lack of laboratory and lecture hall space at this stage makes it impossible to extend the B.Sc. Course to four years in this department.
Anyone who reads that, and anyone who thinks of the history and achievements of National University must be disturbed and must see the urgent necessity for taking action.
I have indicated, as I say, the main heads of the problems of the maintenance of standards, the securing and keeping of staff and the equipment in the library. Many of these problems are in some way vitally affected by the accommodation problem. It frightens me to some extent that we have allowed our University problems to grow to such proportions. When we have solved the accommodation problem—I am talking of University College, Dublin, now—which is a vitally urgent one, and one which, in fact, must be solved here and now unless there is to be a breakdown, we still have to deal further with the problem of University education at the technical end, the debate on which must wait for another occasion.
Now let me come to the question of the Report. Like Deputy Dr. Browne, I think this matter should have got a pretty thorough discussion here. I was rather surprised that nobody else adverted to possible alternatives. Deputy Dr. Browne is right in saying, though I fundamentally and, I might almost say, violently disagree with him in much of his approach to this problem, that we should consider the alternative. It has come up in a very special way through the research group of Tuairim. I have read the Tuairim report with great interest and a good deal of sympathy.
I am sorry this research group did not make its report available to the Commission beforehand. The Commission were sitting for a year or more. I know it takes time to prepare a report even such as this. However, if it had been before the Commission, it would have given them some information and it would have given us an easier task in that it would have made us all feel that all aspects had very thoroughly been examined. That statement however is not to be taken as subscribing to any suggestion that the Commission did not thoroughly examine all aspects of the problem.
The Tuairim report is an interesting document. I think I would be lacking in something if I did not say that it is a very fine production of a sort—as a point of view—but coming at this stage, it fails. It is too late. It leaves itself open to the suspicion that it is aimed at knocking down a proposal without adequately putting up another proposal. I can quite understand that the Tuairim organisation would not be in a position to put up a complete constructive proposal as an alternative to that of the Commission. They would not have the same facilities. I would not criticise them for that. However, it is a pity the document was not available to the Commission.
I find myself, now, starting from near where the Commission started, something like the Tuairim approach. I accept whole-heartedly the statement of the members of the Commission. I see no reason to doubt their sincerity when they say they started off with the idea of keeping University College in its own area. I think all of us would start with the same idea. A certain tradition—the tradition of a hard fight, if nothing else—was linked with Earlsfort Terrace and, for some science graduates, with Merrion Street.
Everyone will admit that there are dangers and that there will be unforeseen difficulties in uprooting University College and re-establishing it in a completely new site in the Belfield area. Are these considerations enough to dispose of the problem? Let us start where the Commission started. Let us say we want to keep the University College in its own area.
The proposal is to expand in the Earlsfort Terrace site. Before I go into the details of that site let me ask this question: Will that give unity of the college? When we run into difficulties on that site, we hear it said that there are the Land Commission buildings and the Merrion Street buildings. Let anybody who says that face the problem that there has always been and still is a lack of essential unity for University College, Dublin. There will be no great improvement, even if we expand the Earlsfort Terrace accommodation, if we must leave some of the Science Group down here. Even if you rationalise it to the extent of whole departments, is there space for unity in either the Earlsfort Terrace or Merrion Street areas?
I imagine the expert advice available to the Commission would at least be as good as the volunteer advice available in this Tuairim report. It has been suggested that the station at Harcourt Street would be ideal as it is only across the road from Earlsfort Terrace. In itself, it would not be enough. Where the rest? There are two suggestions. The first is compulsory acquisition and the other is the Iveagh Gardens.
There is a condition attaching to the gift of the Iveagh Gardens. No matter how autocratic or dictatorial modern Socialist trends may be, surely decency would draw the line at overriding the conditions of what was a valuable gift to the nation? We have to go on the premise that the conditions attaching to that site will have to be honoured.
There are questions of degree in a compulsory acquisition. Compulsory acquisition is very dangerous and unpleasant. It is dangerous unless it is really essential. It is likely to involve long delays. There must be delays because the equities of the case have to be decided by the Court.
Compulsory acquisition will involve delay and I wonder if it will give a really good solution. For instance, if we are to continue with Earlsfort Terrace, the natural thing would be to point out that the site is there for a unified block. However, Wesley College and a couple of churches are there also. Will you suggest compulsory acquisitions in those cases?
I am not enamoured of any suggestions of compulsory acquisition. When it is brought down to a compass on a map and a definite survey, I fail to see where you can find an adequate answer in the Earlsfort Terrace area. I do not think you will. I am not unsympathetic to the argument which points out the distance of, say, medical schools from the clinical centres, that points out the distance that Belfield is from library facilities. There is a great attraction in the centre of the city in, say, the National Library, the Royal Irish Academy and, to a lesser extent, the Museums. The library facilities for research in the Royal Irish Academy and so forth will have to be used as they have been used.
There are quite obviously disadvantages in regard to the Belfield site. Nobody, not even Deputy Dillon, will suggest that the Belfield site has not some disadvantages associated with it. It is a question of advantages and disadvantages weighed against each other. What is the solution? The Earlsfort Terrace proposition—and I have read the reports of the Commission and of Tuairim at least as well as anybody else in the House—does not seem to be a solution. I would be less than honest if I did not point out that there would seem to me to be another possible solution even in the centre of the city but it too has its drawbacks.
The College problem could have been met. Some of us advocated a solution as far back as the end of the war. I happened, towards the end of the war, to be involved in an activity which brought me fairly close to the University and its problem. I tried to press on a previous Minister for Education and some other members of the Government a point of view. It was a point of view that did not originate with myself. Some time or other the problem of University College, Dublin, would have to be grappled with. There was only one way of doing it. It was a major job. The idea was to shift all the Government institutions.
We talked about compulsory acquisition but there would not be any need for compulsory acquisition if you were prepared to move Dáil Éireann and this block of buildings, the Department of the Taoiseach, the Department of Finance and the Department of Agriculture away from Merrion Street. If you were prepared to take the whole side of the road, which is Government property, and build on that you could get the Science-Engineering section of the College more or less completely in this area with the College administrative headquarters probably here.
Then you would have in the Earlsfort Terrace site the Medical School confirmed in its temporary accommodation there, and the limited expansion needed to carry the general Faculty of Arts and other Faculties of the same kind. I must confess that I never saw this proposal reach the stage which these two documents reached in the matter of details but it did seem to me that there was a solution available on that basis. That was canvassed in 1945.
Today that solution seems to me to be the only alternative solution. Even if we were to say: "We shall move from here and give University College, Dublin, this site and they can establish their technical sections and expand the Earlsfort Terrace site," it would be a solution but what advantages would that solution have? First of all, what advantages would it have for the country in regard to the net costs?
I know that some Deputies were very vocal and violent on the question of Parliamentary buildings in 1945. Looking back now, had we the new Parliament buildings and more Government accommodation as then envisaged we would have a different problem to-day. I do not want to draw the acrimony of that question into this debate. I shall put it in the present tense. Do we move the Dáil and Government buildings, the Land Commission and the other institutions? If we move these institutions, we shall have to provide accommodation which will involve a very big amount of expenditure for buildings. In addition to that we shall have to find a considerable sum for University College, Dublin, to develop the site. I think that at first blush I would be entitled to ask what the comparative costs would be and to suspect that the comparative costs would come out very much in favour of the proposals made by the Commission.
I do not want to disparage the Tuairim Report in any way. There is much to commend it but it can never have the same authority as the Commission. They had not the same resources. When I take the assessment of the Earlsfort Terrace site on that basis and the assessment of the Belfield site on either document, and consider the alternative which seems to be the only practical alternative to the Belfield project, I think we must answer as the Minister did.
Let us follow that a little bit further. Even if we did that, you would have the essential problem. You would still have the College split. You would still have left the problems of accommodation not laid out to the best advantage. You could, for instance, bring the department of physics down to Merrion Street but what problems would be brought up there? Would that help to solve the existing problems in regard to chemistry which are there already? Would that help to solve the problems of the engineering department which are there already, particularly the problems connected with the lack of space to carry out research?
In that connection, I was very perturbed at one thing in these documents before me when it was pointed out that research on hydraulics is going away from the University where its natural centre would be. I understood that was a question of space. The engineering department has no facility for research at all. That is the fact of the matter. Would that give them the facilities? Would any proposals such as were canvassed and not worked out in detail in regard to the Earlsfort Terrace site, be able to satisfy that demand either? No.
As I see it, we have three possibilities canvassed. We all started off with a strong bias to the central position here. We were all very much alive to the dangers of moving to the Belfield area. Notwithstanding all that, I feel constrained to say that I can come in the long run to no other conclusion than that arrived at by the Commission in respect to the Belfield site. I have taken a long time to say that I suppose but, on the other hand, we were criticised for not having adequately dealt at length with this problem.
Incidentally, I, too, was frightened by the words "20 years". The suggestion in regard to 20 years brings up other possibilities. We talked about physics and chemistry. We did not say anything about the biological departments. We did not advert to the fact that one important department—the department of biochemistry which is world famous and is one of our great schools—has already had to move out to Belfield. The physics department is merely making do with the additional accommodation made available to it by the flitting of the other department.
We are living in an age when we cannot see the end of the expansion in chemistry or physics and we are living in an age when we can expect expansion in other sciences as well. Who can say what the various branches of that young science, biology, will bring in the future or what demands they will make? Already, everybody knows, biologists of every kind are employed in industry, in fermentation industries and so forth. We may have to face expansion in those schools as we have had to face it and are facing it in what I might call the conventional sciences.
We may find that the plight of the engineering side is to become more critical as our community become more dependent on them, with more factories, more industries, more artificial production of products in agriculture and industry, inevitably resulting in more chemical and mechanical engineering. Remember that what the scientist does today is the problem of the engineer tomorrow and the tempo is quickening.
I once heard one of our professors point out that while Faraday discovered the electro-magnetic effects, which are the basis of modern electrical power, in the 1830's, electrical power development did not come until towards the end of the century, but nuclear fission was discovered only in 1939 and they were able to drop a nuclear bomb in 1945. Things are speeding up and as yet, we are industrially undeveloped. You have the engineering problems as well as the scientific problems and now is the time to make adequate provision if you are making provision at all. I would therefore strongly urge, on the merits of the case, that the report of the Commission should be adopted.
One of my last words is this, and it is for those who like myself might have a feeling of trepidation about the move, who might feel an old attraction for the area of the college, and fear that it might lose its tradition and lose all that has been associated with the battle of the Earlsfort Terrace site: let us remember that there is nothing static in history for communities or for universities or anything else. Let us remember that in the future in many ways things will be as different for our people as conditions today differ from conditions of 50 years ago when the National University of Ireland was founded.
I feel no apprehension about this. There has been a wonderful tradition behind the National University and behind our Dublin College in particular. Its vitality and its viability are a guarantee of its progress. The battles of its professors to maintain their standards, particularly in the subjects I have mentioned, standards they achieved so quickly and which they have never lowered, are further guarantees that, given the facilities, this College will blossom into something even more valuable than it has been to the community to date. I do not dispute its value nor do I forget that it was from that College largely, and from the National University largely, that the trained personnel came to set us going in that part of the country which we now have free.
I think that the thing to do is to accept the Commission's report. Let us take the Tuairim Report too on its merits. Let us take it on the basis that we have no time to go back to reopen subjects interminably. Perhaps the reopening of subjects and the accentuation of the difficulties would have been one of the very things the enemies of this country would have wished for at the time when we were developing our National University. When the fight was on for higher education for our people, one of the things which those who had us down feared most was that we would be intellectually free and intellectually developed. The people who took that point of view at that time and who dominated us, if they were here now, would probably take the attitude of obstructing and stopping this project.
We here as a national Parliament should accept it in the spirit in which the Minister put it to us, and he put it very frankly and fairly from all the aspects of the case. I would urge on the House now that there is no time left for any further discussion on the matter. It is as acute as that.
I should like to finish with a word of appreciation for the Minister for Education and his own speech. He is a graduate of the National University of Ireland. His speech showed him to be a worthy graduate of that University and showed the standard which that University has maintained.
