——had caused problems in many areas where you pass through, but I do not think there is any area where he could have done so much damage as in the College of Art. I am afraid the students at that time, somewhat naïvely politically, finding themselves faced with a very genial, friendly Minister who seemed very sympathetic with their case, who promised all kinds of reforms and changes, took his promises seriously and I am afraid that a good deal of what followed has been because of the frustration following discovery by the students that none of the promises was worth the paper on which it was written. The Minister refused to write them down or to sign them although he had promised to do that, too.
The first meeting of the students with that Minister was in April, 1968. With his customary ebullience, Deputy Lenihan promised them immediate action, new buildings within five years —this is a long time for a Brian Lenihan promise: they are usually for shorter periods—a governing body with student participation within one month and another meeting with them within three weeks. The times get shorter as one goes along. The next meeting was three months later, in August 1968. I understand he apologised, as it is customary for him to do on these occasions, and in order to allay their dissatisfaction he shortened the time for the building of the new college from five years to three years. He also promised a new governing body by Christmas.
However, when Christmas came this present was not given to the students. Instead, the promise was withdrawn and instead an advisory council was proposed which the students, with the patience they showed at that time, accepted. I think they were unwise to do so—they should have stood firm on the previous promise in regard to the governing body. At that time, however, they were completely naïve and perhaps, too easily conciliated.
The advisory council was set up and within two months—again, I admit I may have been misled in some of this information—the council thus established, consisting of two Government representatives, I think three staff and three students, with Mr. O'Connor from the Department as director, accepted proposals from the students that there should be established an executive committee of art educationalists. Acceptance of this proposal eliminated the reason for the committee's own existence. This recommendation by the advisory council, which the Minister had himself established, was rejected by Mr. O'Connor at that stage and this led to a point where the students withdrew and there was the first closure of the college.
In March, 1969, the whole cycle was taken up again. Again, meetings took place between the students and the civil servants. There were two more meetings with Deputy Lenihan at which a second interim advisory council was offered and, I think, accepted, again, the students showing exemplary patience, having been codded about the governing body and having been codded about the promised acceptance of the recommendations of the first advisory council. They very patiently accepted the second advisory council, this one to consist of the director, who would be chairman, two students, two teachers, a departmental art inspector and six others from the field of art education and design.
This second advisory council appointed a sub-committee, to which I have already referred, to look into the question of what should be done about the college. At the same time, Deputy Lenihan promised consultations with the students at all stages of the drafting of the Bill. A number of promises were made—the students listed them at 20, but, of course, they probably split them up into sub-promises and made them seem as numerous as possible— and the Minister promised to sign them when they were written down. I recall that particular occasion because I met some of the students and saw their sense of elation and subsequent frustration when that particular promise to sign the promises was not implemented.
The college was re-opened on 15th April and when Deputy Lenihan refused either to sign the promises or to keep them the first occupation took place, an occupation during which damage was done to these plaster casts, which have intrigued this House for some months past and whose provenance, values and artistic merit have been matters of considerable debate here. Indeed, it is nice to see the House so concerned about matters of such artistic merit because it does not often spend much of its time discussing them. I found it a little difficult to believe the value placed on these heavily overpainted 19th century objects. We never, of course, managed to discover at question time, as Deputy Thornley will recall, who the expert was who placed this remarkable valuation on them. However, the students in their frustration did do damage to these plaster casts and they are not to be condoned for doing that, although the fact that they occupied the college on that and other occasions is something which is very easy to understand in the circumstances of this extraordinary litany of broken promises and mismanagement.
In the meantime the sub-committee of the second advisory council appointed by the Minister reported. Their report favoured the dissolution of the college as it stood and the setting up of a new institution with re-staffing. This was not the first report that emphasised the need to re-staff the college; this has been the recurrent theme through the long period of the college's existence. It is not easy for this House to assess the validity of these recommendations but any institution which is the subject of so many reports, a number of which do contain this recommendation, raises questions as to whether the present staffing is entirely satisfactory. This report recommended that all existing posts should at least be technically dissolved so that a fresh start could be made.
This report was not accepted or implemented and three members of the council, Professor Christopher Ryan, Professor Geoffrey Hewitt, principal of the Cork School of Art, and Mr. Dermot Larkin, resigned in protest against the non-implementation of the report which they had been asked to prepare. Mr. Dermot Larkin has been reported as saying that all the members of the advisory council, other than the actual members of the staff of the college, agreed with this report. I can understand the hesitation of the staff of the college to agree with a report which suggested that their contracts should be terminated and not necessarily renewed. I should like to hear from the Minister if it is true that all the other members agreed with the recommendations and if not, how many of them agreed because that is a very serious and important point for us to know about.
There followed a period of relative calm, despite the frustrations caused by the non-implementation of this further recommendation, until May, 1970, when the students proposed that an association of members of the College of Art, comprising all the students and all the staff, should run it. This was accompanied by a further occupation by a group of students, but not all the students, and this was followed by a meeting with the present Minister. At this stage we start having meetings with a Minister who, although we may have criticisms of the way he has handled this affair and the Bill before us, at least does not promise what he does not intend to do or what he is not capable of performing. If anything I would fault the present Minister with promising too little rather than too much. The Minister regarded the student group as not representative and rejected all their proposals which was a refreshing change from the approach of Deputy Lenihan.
In October last year we had the introduction of gardaí into the college to remove an unregistered student. As I understand it, he had been suspended in May and although he had refused to submit his work, it had been passed by two external assessors; he was never let fail but was later awarded the diploma after a nominal assessment. One feature of the college's history in the last couple of years has been the number of occasions on which disciplinary measures were instituted, very unwisely at times, and subsequently had to be retrieved or modified when commonsense broke in. That itself is bad for discipline in any educational institution; disciplinary measures should be few and far between and when they are undertaken they should not be undertaken unless it is absolutely clear they are necessary and unless those concerned are going to stand over them. It is very unwise to discipline people, without adequate reason, in a half-baked way and then have to climb down. Towards the end of last year also, Miss Lucy Charles was appointed acting director, a decision which evoked protest from the students. In the current year we have had the dismissal of the model, the appointment of Mr. Michael O'Neill as administrator, a further occupation in April, and the events of the last couple of months of which the House is all too much aware.
In all that tangled history whoever is to blame it is not the students. I am not saying they are not to blame for their actions and frustrations and that their actions were not, at times, reprehensible, but it is not they who established the college, it is not they who run the college and it is not they who fail to reform it. They are the victims and as victims sometimes are, they have been sulky victims, reluctant victims and angry victims. It is more important that we have regard to their status as victims than to the adjectives one can apply to the kind of victims they were. Their behaviour was less than perfect at times but the fact that they were faced with the intense frustration of repeated promises of change and reform and the failure to implement these promises, explains a good deal of their behaviour. In fact, although they have been blamed for causing damage on several occasions, I do not think the position has been helped by the exaggeration of the damage done.
Throughout most of the period and at many stages during this complex and devious history their actions have been surprisingly moderate. Their willingness to accept the dropping of the promise of the governing body, their willingness to accept the collapse of the first advisory council and their willingness to accept the second advisory council, the extent to which they accepted being strung along with promises of various kinds, does not suggest a group of wild, revolutionaries looking for every possible occasion to cause trouble. It suggests a group of students not particularly radical for the most part, rather politically naïve, gradually becoming increasingly frustrated after months and even years of frustration and total mishandling at political and Civil Service level and some, although by no means all, of the staff, reaching a state of frustration when their behaviour continued in its immoderation. That is the best description one can make of the way this has evolved.
There have been a great many misunderstandings. Misunderstandings were, perhaps, inevitable when a Government Department, administrative civil servants, were running not just an educational institution but this particular educational institution because the College of Art is the kind of educational institution which is least likely to be successfully or happily run on simple, bureaucratic lines. If one had to pick the educational institution in charge of which one would not put civil servants, despite their great merits, it would be an art college. One might possibly put them in charge of a college of public administration but not an art college.
There is a conviction on the part of the students that they are being victimised in all kinds of ways and often, perhaps these convictions are delusions. The situation they have been in has bred paranoia. I believe I have evidence, from what I have heard from both sides, of misunderstandings on both the part of the Minister, whose contacts have been necessarily somewhat indirect—he has met the students on several occasions but on the whole the contacts have been through civil servants—and misunderstandings on the part of the civil servants concerned. The conviction of the civil servants, which has extended to the Minister, and has been evident in both the reactions of the Minister and the civil servants, that they are faced with a band of dangerous revolutionaries, stems a good deal from a failure to understand the students. Those of us who are involved in the educational process and who have occasion to deal with students frequently and are very much involved with them become more accustomed to the use of revolutionary language and treat it without too much seriousness. When students talk to us about the neo-colonialist, imperialist attitude of the college authorities we do not get terribly excited about it. We translate that into saying that they are not satisfied with the cloakroom facilities or something like that. Of course, there are among young people today individuals who have revolutionary leanings and some of these may be quite effective organisers although the fissiparous tendencies of the extreme left usually undo any work achieved by the vociferous tendencies of the extreme left and very often these groups are much less dangerous than the noise they make would appear to suggest.
I think some of the difficulties have arisen because the authorities of the college—perhaps the staff, most certainly the civil servants and the Minister—have taken much too seriously the language used occasionally and I am not convinced, as they seem to be, that there are people there who are determined to break up our institutions. Perhaps there are some, nobody can prove negatives anyway, but certainly on the record of how this whole business has gone and judging it by the standards of other educational institutions and their experience, I do not detect much revolutionary activity going on there but a surprising moderation in the early periods turning into a very unfortunate radicalism on the part of the minority at a later stage. Above all, I detect a sense of confusion, unhappiness and, at times, despair on the part of students most of whom and conceivably indeed all of whom simply want to get a decent art education and are utterly frustrated about getting it in the present conditions.
I know the Minister will not agree with me. He will say, with justice, that he is closer to it than I am or at least that he is in direct contact with the civil servants who have to deal with the individual people concerned, that my contacts are only with certain people, that I only see the good side of them, that they put on a good face when they are talking to me and that I do not know the whole truth. No doubt he can say this, but I am still not convinced and I would on the whole tend to trust my own instinct in these matters, even based on the more limited knowledge I have, than trust to his judgement or that of some of his officers who, I think, are not really in a position perhaps to assess just how seriously meant are some of the things that have been said.
So much for background and history. It suggests to me the need now to make a very real break. It suggests to me that the last thing we want is a so-called autonomous authority which must turn to the Minister for approval of many of its actions and the very last thing we want is a college into which at any hour of day or night civil servants can march and demand to see documents and if a member of the staff stops them to say "Hello" to them and thereby delays them—I am taking the extreme case of course to show the absurdity of it—he can be fined £100. It is inconceivable to me that you can have an educational institution into which civil servants have the right to march, to demand to see documents, and if not handed what they want immediately by staff or students, by the administrative staff, the registrar, the director, anybody, and if not just obstructed but delayed even, can go to the courts and have penalties imposed on the people concerned. I suppose one runs a labour camp like that. No doubt there are countries where there are labour camps run like that. I suppose the punishment is something different to a fine because there would not be much money floating around a labour camp not that there is that much money floating around the College of Art either, I think.
As a way of running an education establishment it is frankly incredible. I can only hope that the Minister will have second thoughts and that section 25 of this Bill, which shows him and his advisers in so far as they have any responsibility for it, in a very bad light, will be withdrawn. I do not believe frankly that when the Minister stands back from it and thinks about it his better self will want to stand over it and I know many members of his party who would not wish to be associated with a measure of this kind involving this draconian provision for constant, continuous civil service interference in the affairs of an educational institution with penalties before the courts for anybody who delays them as they go about their business, business which they should not have at all in such an institution.
Far from wanting to set up that kind of institution what we want is a College of Art as far removed as possible from the public administration, financed by public funds, suitably controlled to ensure that they are properly expended. We have a system now through the Higher Education Authority for doing this. I see no reason why —at least I see a reason but I do not regard it as a valid reason—this body should not be financed through the HEA and put at a remove from the Department of Education. In saying that I am conscious of the fact, although he is not here at the moment, that I am probably by so doing losing Deputy O'Donovan's sympathy and support. Despite that I still think there is something to be said for the buffering of it especially in this case when there has been so much buffeting that a buffer seems very much to be desired.
There are many other features of the College of Art and the way it has been and is operating which we need to consider in the context of this Bill. It is only when one considers these that one can really see the Bill in perspective and really see what is wrong with it and why we need a very different kind of Bill. I shall run through about half a dozen features of the college which seem to require a bit of attention. One which I am very puzzled by is the system under which students pass their assessments or examinations. The arrangements is, on the face of it, satisfactory enough. They present their work for assessment to two outside assessors and their professor. The decision, I suppose, is taken by the majority and it seems to me on the whole an unexceptionable system assuming that the external assessors are well and properly chosen and I have no reason to think they are not. That would be all right if that having been done students then passed but in this most curious of institutions when they have been passed, when their artistic work has been approved of by the external assessors and their own professor and they are judged to have passed and to have qualified either in the final year for the diploma or in an earlier year to pass on to the next year, at that stage the assessments go to the Department for approval. If I recall correctly the representations made to me last year, they remain there for rather a long time. I seem to recall being asked by students to find out how much longer it would be before they got their results. I was rather started to discover that the results were held up in the Department. I believe that last year—again the Minister will contradict me if I am wrong and he probably will have some corrections to make in some of the things I am saying—one student passed by the assessors, internal and external, was in fact failed by the Department who have no function it is the matter whatsoever because it is not their job to withdraw the award of a pass to a student who has been assessed in this way. I believe that subsequently after protest the student was in fact passed.
I should like to know from the Minister what exact function is meant to be performed by the Department. Why do the marks have to go to the Department? Have the Department at any time in the past three years failed somebody who was passed by the assessors? Why have they done so? On what grounds do they assert the right to do so? What is the purpose of this extraordinary mechanism? I should like to have an assurance from him that in the current year—because this process is going on at present—students who have been passed by the assessors will not be deprived of that pass by any administrative action by the Department.
It is a curious fact—I believe it to be a fact—that this year the external assessors have been asked not to say anything to the students about how they got on. It has been the normal informal practice in the past, as it is very often in the university and other institutions of higher education, to tell the students informally how they have done before the formal results come out. One is often pressed for this information and one often gives students an indication of how they have done if the position is clearcut. If they were borderline cases obviously before they would go to the final board you would not, but once they go to the board the marks are published and everybody knows where he is. This year for some reason external assessors appear to have been asked not to disclose this information to students. One wonders whethere this new procedure betokens any increased intention on the part of the Department to utilise a power which they appear to claim to overturn a decision of the assessors and, for their own reasons, to fail a student who has passed.
I should also like to know from the Minister if there is any truth in the statement made to me that on this occasion the external assessors were approached by administrative civil servants in respect of some of the students, not about their work but about their character. My information is that the external assessors were astonished at this, resentful of it, and regarded it as something they had never come across anywhere in the world. Is it the case that such contacts took place between administrative civil servants and the external assessors? Were the external assessors approached by administrative civil servants about the characters of the students, about what kind of people they were? What was the purpose of such intervention? If it took place—and I should like a clear assurance from the Minister on this matter—what could the purpose be other than to prejudice the external assessors against the students?
I doubt if it would work because most academics—and these people are academics—have very high standards in these matters and any attempt to prejudice them against a student usually has very little effect indeed. I should like to know precisely what this mechanism is, why the Department retain this right, and have they in the past failed people the assessors had passed? Can the Minister assure me that it will not happen this year? What contacts took place, about the students, between administrative civil servants and the external assessors? These are questions that have to be asked in view of the situation that exists in the college.
Another recent event in the college which I found very disturbing, and which we ventilated in the Dáil but which we have not sufficiently sorted out yet, is the curious case of the conflicting statements after the meeting with the Minister. There was a meeting between the staff and the Minister which I had some little part in trying to get going by trying to get the two sides together to talk. This meeting was followed by a statement by the Secretary of the staff association expressing dissatisfaction. As I understand it, that statement was issued without the authority of his colleagues, off his own bat, and was his assessment of the meeting. There followed a statement issued in the names of seven of the nine members of the staff concerned which did not actually repudiate the secretary's statement, as such, but repudiated Press reports suggesting that they were dissatisfied with the meeting with the Minister.
In this statement, very properly I think, they paid tribute to the courtesy of the Minister. Indeed, I must say that both members of the staff and students I have met have been at one in paying tribute to his courtesy and his willingness to listen to their views. There is no question about that. They may not feel that he always takes the action they want him to take, but they all feel that they have had a full and courteous hearing from him. After the issue of that statement by the seven members of the staff, or on their behalf, other Press reports appeared, other statements were made, which suggested that they were prompted to make that statement.
We have had this out at Question Time and I must say that I was not impressed with the Minister's approach. I respect the Minister's integrity and I respect his honesty. I am not suggesting that on this occasion he was dishonest, but he chose his words with great care, as is customary with politicians, to deny what had not been asserted. The basic fact which concerns us here is that a statement was issued by the Government Information Bureau on behalf of the Department of Education, the flat statement that this letter was written of their own volition and without any prompting from any officer of the Department of Education.
If the word "prompting" means anything, it refers to a process under which a man is rung up, asked to come in, asked what he thinks of a matter, a letter is shown to him, and he is asked to sign it. In fact, I would use a stronger word than "prompting". I could not use a less strong word than "prompting". That happened. I have spoken to the man concerned. Incidentally, the Press reports of what I said in the Dáil on the last occasion were misleading in one respect and I want to correct any false impression given. Perhaps the problem lies in the punctuation of what I said rather than the wording. I did not say or intend to say that three members of the staff were shown a handwritten draft and that what appeared subsequently may not have been the same thing. This was true of one member of the staff who was shown a handwritten draft of a letter in what he understood to be the handwriting of the civil servant concerned.
The other two people to whom I spoke were shown a typed letter with signatures attached which was the final letter. Owing, I think, to a fault in the punctuation, which extended to some degree to the Official Report, the suggestion was attributed to me a couple of weeks ago that, in fact, all three of them had been shown a handwritten letter. That was not the case. It was only the case in regard to one of them. It was only in one case that the teacher was summoned in by telephone to be shown this and asked to sign it. In other cases the approaches were in the college and were less formal, but nonetheless the initiative in each of the cases I have tracked down came from the civil servant concerned.
It is not satisfactory that the public should be misled by this kind of heading: "No Prompting of Art teachers." The heading seems to be fully warranted by the text of the statement given underneath: "This letter was written of their own volition and without any prompting from any officer of the Department of Education." The Minister should not stand over that statement. He should admit that a mistake was made, that whoever issued that statement went beyond what could be justified and that, when a man is summoned in by telephone and shown a document and asked to sign it, that is prompting by any standards. Indeed, even if somebody is approached in the corridor and asked: "What did you think of what you saw in the papers about the meeting? Do you think this kind of letter would represent your views? Would you like to sign it"— especially when he is a member of the part-time staff and could be sacked at a moment's notice by the civil servant concerned—I regard that, too, as prompting.
The Department should not have issued that statement. The Minister should have admitted the mistake in the House. He should not have stood over it as he did. I hope that, on reflection, and having thought over what I have said, and having considered the matter more fully, the Minister will, in replying to this debate, admit that an error was made there and that, in appearing to stand over it in the Dáil, he acted in error. He will lose nothing by admitting to a mistake in a case like that. On the contrary, I think his reputation will be enhanced. I know as a politician that there is a widespread delusion amongst all politicians that to admit to making a mistake is disastrous. This is a very widespread delusion and I can understand the Minister sharing it. I hope that on this occasion he will see the wisdom of owning up that a mistake was made.
This incident tells us something about the whole atmosphere of the college and the way it is run. It demonstrates that it is a mistake to have an institution of this type run directly by the Civil Service. I say this with no animus against civil servants but, to each man his job. The job of civil servants is one of public administration. There are few things further removed from public administration than running a College of Art. I suppose that in so far as they were running something, and administration is running something also, there is a kind of generic similarity between the two, but I do not think that the job of administering a Government Department, staffed by civil servants under a strict code of discipline—the Official Secrets Act and all the rest of it—is in any way comparable to the job of running a College of Art. All the evidence is that it has been unsatisfactory. The Minister may say: "I agree. That is precisely why the Bill is being brought in." He may say that, perhaps, his predecessor should have done it sooner but at least he has brought in a Bill and, up to a point, that is true. It is the terms of the Bill, and the determination on the part of those who drafted the Bill to retain tight control over so many areas and so many aspects of the running of the new board, that make me dissatisfied with the Bill.
There are other features of the college which require more consideration. There are repeated allegations by the students that they are not issued with materials which have been purchased out of public funds and should be available to them. I must admit that I have never understood these allegations. I am not at all clear as to what happens to the materials and why the students do not get them. The persistence with which they make this claim suggests to me that there is something here at least to be looked into.
They have also pointed out—and this has been validated in this House in replies to questions—that only part, approximately half, of the money allocated for scholarships is spent. It would be easy for the Minister to say that they do not reach the standard but it seems to me that, in an institution of this kind where so many of the students are not at all well off and have to struggle very hard to keep themselves, it is most unfortunate to have a fund of money voted by the Dáil to assist these students by way of scholarship or grant not fully used. The Minister can stand on the fact that, on the advice given to him, they are not all up to the standard required. However, we should be thinking more in terms of grants than scholarships and the money available should be used for this purpose.
Earlier this year while driving down the country I gave a lift to a student from the College of Art. At the time of stopping to offer her a lift I was not aware that she was a student from the college but, as is my custom on encountering anyone seeking a lift, I offered her a lift. In the course of conversation she told me that in order to put herself through the college she found it necessary to go down the country on two days each week to teach art, for which she received £8. By avoiding transport costs she lived on that £8 and got through the course even though the two days spent teaching would have an effect on her attendance and the amount of work she could do. I have nothing but admiration for somebody whose determination to achieve his or her chosen career extends to such devotion and dedication as in that particular case. The fact that that girl and so many other students in the college have such a struggle to make ends meet emphasises how deplorable and saddening it is that funds voted by the Dáil to help such students should not be used fully. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that this small sum of £5,000 is not held back on the grounds of whether students reach a particular standard.
There is also the problem of library facilities but on this there are conflicting accounts. Students insist on saying that the books are locked up and are not accessible to them, but the Minister says this is not the case and that the books are available to students. Short of going in and wandering around the place, a facility which, on at least one occasion, has been forbidden to politicians, I cannot check up on this matter. It is to be deplored that Members of the Oireachtas have been forbidden from going into the college.
