Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 17 Feb 1976

Vol. 288 No. 1

Private Members' Business. - Third Level Education: Motion.

Mr. Wilson

I move:

That Dáil Éireann deplores the failure of the Minister for Education to formulate a suitable policy for third level non-university education and calls on him to establish the NCEA as the certificate, diploma and degree awarding authority in that sector.

What I have to say is very simple. The Minister and the Government made a grave mistake and the purpose of the motion is to try to have it remedied. Speaking on a similar motion last year the Minister is quoted at column 90 of Volume 278 of the Official Report:

...we decided to initiate the establishment of the structures necessary to secure a comprehensive system of third level education in this country. We took this decision having considered all the advice available to us.

He spoke about equality of opportunity in access to higher education and the recognition of courses and qualifications. I move this motion because I am convinced that having any other authority than the NCEA assessing, validating, and awarding degrees at this level is divisive not merely in the third level area generally but in the institutions themselves. I want to know how the Minister and the Government can contend that they are moving towards a comprehensive position in third level education when they are actually introducing a system where the NCEA are bestowing, validating and awarding diplomas and certificates and where some university, if one can be found to do so, will award degrees in the same institutions. You have a university presence at the top and an NCEA presence at the lower reaches. How can this be called an effort at comprehensivisation by any sane person?

I was puzzled at the time and the results of the action have left me more puzzled that anybody could attempt to defend that as a movement towards comprehensivation. Surely the Minister for Education, the willing or unwilling messenger boy of the Government in this matter must regard his role as absurd. Last year he set off like a travelling salesman to try to sell to some university college the awarding of the degree for the graduates of the National College of Physical Education in Limerick. The Minister is a good salesman but he failed to sell and when he failed to sell he came back to the NCEA and the NCEA conferred the degree at the end of last year on those people. They were expecting to do so. The Minister is wedded to the idea of university conferring at the top —the wedding is supposed to have been forced by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the Minister for Education.

Mr. Keating

It is treble-barrelled.

Mr. Richard Burke

A treble-barrelled shotgun.

Mr. Wilson

Yes, well aimed. The university refused and he has to fall back then on the kept woman, the NCEA, to come to his aid when his advances are refused by the universities. This has already happened in the case of the National College of Physical Education in Limerick. The university does not oblige, so back to the NCEA. This is a degrading position for the NCEA to find themselves in and that council are very worthy of the respect which they have earned since set up as an active body some time ago. Last year was not one of action in this regard, the Minister is away again, he has his wares in his bag and he is going around to the universities to ask them if they will confer degrees on the graduates of the National Institute for Higher Education in Limerick in June of this year.

The unfortunate students have been writing to me to try to find out what is happening—who is conferring the degree on them at the end of this year. I put down a question to the Minister and the Minister said everything is all right—things are under consideration, the NUI is considering, he is is considering, everyone is considering, but the students do not yet know who will confer degrees on them at the end of this year.

This is not good enough, it is a dereliction of duty on the part of the Minister even within the terms of his proposal/decisions of November, 1974, He has had lots of time to remove this worry from the minds of the students who are now starting to campaign to draw attention to this matter. A decision on the matter is not good enough in a final year in a third level institution.

Why should the students have to worry about who will confer degrees on them? Deputies, O'Malley, Collins, Noonan and Herbert have asked me to raise this matter by way of a private motion. Some Deputies from the Government side were worried about it and expressed their worry to me, but the Minister obviously has silenced them. They cannot open their mouths. Whatever he is hatching seems to be a secret from everybody, from Deputies on his own side, but particularly from the students. There are 80 people about to graduate next summer from the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick. It was established as a national institute and it is a national disgrace that those students should be kept in this position—80 young men and women who do not know what their academic future is. It is a cavalier manner of saying: "The NUI are considering the matter, I will have an answer within a short time". This is not good enough in a serious matter of considering the future of those people.

Is this rationalisation? Is this what the Minister and the Government mean by rationalisation? It is a very funny interpretation of the word "rationalisation". The whole business is irrational. We had the Minister for Industry and Commerce coming in here with a great flourish of trumpets, carrying the flag for the underprivileged in relation to third-level education. One would have thought that out of this dedication some clarity of objective would emerge. There is no clarity. Nothing has been done. People still do not know where they stand. I remember 16th December, 1974 when the Minister made his announcement and sent out a copy of the proposals. In the week before the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that he was arrogating to himself all responsibility for the technological end of things in the Government.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Keating)

The Deputy ought to validate that or withdraw it.

Mr. Wilson

I could validate it but does the Minister deny that in the week ending Friday, 13th December, 1974 he did not make a statement about technological education and his role in it?

Mr. Keating

The Deputy has changed already. He said that I was arrogating to myself all responsibility for technological education. That is completely untrue. No amount of quoting dates or fiddling could validate it. The Deputy knows there is no such reference. He made it up.

Mr. Wilson

I did not make it up. The Minister is so rattled that he knows damn well that I have seen the tip of the iceberg in that particular regard.

Mr. Keating

The Deputy should validate it or withdraw it.

Mr. Wilson

If the Minister for Education was defending his portfolio he would have run the Minister for Industry and Commerce to blazes out of his office and said that he would look after technological education. He would have a far better chance of getting a rational system going than he has in those circumstances. I have deplored the failure of the Minister for Education to formulate a suitable policy. The evidence that his policy is not suitable is there in the disquiet of the students. Even a person as self-satisfied as the Minister for Industry and Commerce must know that the students are dissatisfied. Every paper is full of their dissatisfaction. I gather that the Limerick people intend to make some kind of formal protest when they should be in the lecture halls and trying to get jobs for themselves next year instead of having to come up to get a positive decision out of the Minister with regard to the awarding of their degrees.

I recommend that the whole idea of the reluctant university conferring a degree as the final award in what is now non-university third level education should be dropped. It was a crazy idea from the beginning. It had nothing to do with comprehensivisation. It had a lot to do with confusion, with making a pot pourri of what is now third level non-university education. It is unworkable obviously. The National College of Physical Education failed to get a university to award a degree last year. The problem of the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick must be a difficult one because no solution has been offered. We do not know what has happened. The Minister has no answer except that somebody, the NUI and the Department, are in consultation about it. I do not know to what effect.

The hotel management course in Galway, the two plus one plus one course has been accepted as a degree course by the NCEA if my information is correct. Who will reward that degree? Will the Minister have to get that into a salesman's bag, trot around to the universities with it and ask them also to validate it? If he is refused will he be back again to the NCEA to confer a degree, which is what they did last year, despite the Minister's decision that the NCEA would have no degree-awarding powers?

I ask the Minister to rescind this proposal because it is divisive. If we are to accept the ideas of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he was in here before, it is making fish out of one part of an institution and flesh out of another. This is what it boils down to. On the contrary, if the NCEA were rewarding certificates, diplomas and degrees, it would unify the whole system. I do not go along with all this bourgeois talk about the university being somehow more respectable than the technological institute which seems to me to be the basis of this whole nonsense. Why should the degree, which was rewarded last year by the NCEA to the National College of Physical Education in Limerick, not be as good as the one awarded by a medieval university? Of course it is. It is only a notion in people's minds. If the certificates are two years, the diplomas are three years and the degrees are four years and are assessed, validated and awarded by the NCEA I submit that that is a stronger tendency towards comprehensivisation than what the Minister proposes to do.

The Minister has a kind of transplant or a graft on to what is now third level non-university and in the manner of heart transplant it looks as if at student level and at teacher level that this transplant will be rejected. If there are deficiencies—I am convinced there are—there are no deficiencies in that particular sphere. There are deficiencies in financing from the point of view of buildings, staff and so on. I agree with both the Minister for Education and the Minister for Industry and Commerce when they say that it is necessary that the standard of buildings, amenities, salaries and so forth should be at the same level and should not be at a lower level than any other third level university institution.

Minister for Education (Mr. Richard Burke)

Would the Deputy like to give the quotation?

Mr. Wilson

It is the same debate. It is Volume 278, No. 1. I do not know what column it is. It is February, 1975.

I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce in particular referred to the salaries, buildings, length of teaching week and so on at that time. I presume the Minister for Education is in total agreement with that.

When I suggested that on a certain limited number of occasions the NCA should also award degrees in the regional technical colleges, I was accused of attempting to proliferate the degree thing and possibly weaken it, make it too common and less worthy. This was not my intention.

For example, I am taking the case of a very good head of a Department, in Plastics in Athlone RTC where after diploma level there is a fourth year in operation at the moment and where professional examinations are taken at the end of the fourth year by the students who have already been awarded a diploma by the NCEA. When a course like that achieves internationally recognised standards, this is where it is important that the NCEA should have degree-awarding powers. Again, I do not wish to expand on this. In that instance, in special advanced plastic technology, very high standards were reached and even awards in competition with similar technical institutes all over Great Britain were gained by students. In such cases the NCEA should have degree-awarding powers and should award degrees.

I agree totally with the Government that the RTCs were basically established by Deputy Faulkner for the training of technicians and the provision of the type of trained personnel that a modern society needs particularly in industry and business. That is conceded. Perhaps when I mentioned this I was not explicit enough and people thought I meant that the NCEA should be awarding degrees all over the place. Indeed, the new terms of reference for the NCEA would demand that there would be co-ordination and that the overall picture should be taken into consideration. There have been dedicated individuals, individuals of ability who have made such great contributions in every sphere, including the technological sphere, that that encouragement should be there and the facility to reward such effort and dedication should be there by the NCEA having degree-awarding power in specific cases.

What the Government are supposed to be doing—and they have not succeeded at all as far as I know and I hope they do not in the interests of education of the country—is to get the universities to award degrees in some of these institutions. What they are doing is putting the university pitch-cap on the head of the present non-university system, and it is burning it and will burn it right through because if a degree has to be taken at the end of the course the bright student who wants to proceed through certificate, diploma to degree will be geared to final examination, to the final year, the final assessment and method of it. If a university wants to maintain itself, it will have to have a strong say in the final examination or assessment of what happens. Some of the university colleges have stated that they have no competence in many of the educational spheres that are catered for by, say, the National Institute of Higher Education. If I understand correctly, the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick, in a modular system, for four years now has been carrying out this continuous assessment of its pupils. What happens if a university is asked then to award a degree? Does the Minister expect the university to say: "Right, you follow your system, you assess them, you tell me if they have graduated and I will confer the degree" or does he expect the university to play a stronger role in the final assessment, and, if so, what kind of role?

The whole matter is confused because it is based on proposals which were misguided and which, if the grapevine is right, the Minister for Education himself was not too happy with. I know the Minister is reluctant to meet the union of students in the National Institute of Higher Education. I think he said he would not meet them because they were socialists. Would you believe that?

Mr. Richard Burke

You are full of nonsense.

Mr. Wilson

And there he is sitting happy cheek by jowl with the Minister for Industry and Commerce. It is a queer world we are living in. I want to read this from the Union of Students of the National Institute for Higher Education. I am sure the union sent a policy statement to the Minister.

The union feels that the NCEA degree would have the following advantages:

(a) The degree is awarded by a national body who are set up to monitor national standards.

(b) The National Council for Educational Awards would be validating and awarding both the NIHE diploma and degree.

In other words, it would be a continuation. The report continues:

(c) The NCEA would have minimal interference in the NIHE.

(d) The NCEA would act as an independent body to ensure that the NIHE retains and fosters its technological ethos.

I am sure that is a sound kind of thing to set in front of them. The report goes on:

(e) The NCEA has gained public acceptability.

That is also true, but in the light of the way it has been brought forward to confer degrees by the Minister when it suits and brought back then and left in the background and produced again if he fails to get a university college to confer in Limerick, public acceptance is a miracle. It has gained public acceptance because of the quality of its work, the quality of its personnel and the work of its committees. What we want is a Bill now setting up the NCEA statutorily, with certificate, diploma and degree conferring powers. I think it is essential to clear away the fog which is enveloping third level non-university education at present. Give it the power—certificate, diploma and degree—and this will have a more unifying effect on third level education than I think the Minister or his colleagues would be prepared to admit. I would like the Minister to wake up to the need for clarity. He knows quite well that it is the mark of the student to be independent, anti-authority and so on, but he wants at the same time to be sure of something, to have an anchor. There is a yearning there for a basic anchor and he will have it if the Minister introduces a Bill setting up the NCEA as a certificate-, diploma- and degree-awarding body.

The question arises as to the relationship between the NCEA domain and the university domain and I do not think it is a question of which is respectable—the Ballsbridge-Foxrock kind of talk does not mean very much when one goes outside the Castleknock Gate or heads out past Inchicore for Naas. It has no fundamentum in re at all. What is the important question is how this sector will relate to the university sector and I think that a great deal of study—far more study than was given to this matter by the Cabinet sub-committee which foisted these proposals on the Minister and the Government—and time should be given to it. The NIHE is only four years old. I do not want to wander into the field of university colleges not going to be allowed to stay on their own after 130 years, but there have been some interesting studies of this whole business of the technology and how it should relate to the university sector. Some of the studies in certain fields were undertaken at the behest of the NCEA and I quoted elsewhere from an article in summary in Studies where Dr. Hession of UCD talked about the mistakes made in the technological sector in Germany, where it was too technological and too little conceptual—the word he uses—claiming that in the university, the conceptual element would be paramount.

I am sure that this in part was the concern of some of the Ministers who spoke on this matter and it is to their credit, but my contention is that this conceptual element in technological education can be given in situ. It is not necessary that it be given in the university. When the Germans apparently made a mistake of being over-technological and giving too little attention to the conceptual end of this education, apparently there was a complete failure when rapid technological change meant re-educating. The foundation was weak on which they had to build and apparently they changed over. My contention is that bringing in the university to award degrees at the top of the third level non-university education does not solve this problem at all. It can be resolved in the third level non-technological college itself.

I do not conceive of the results of what I am proposing here as being the development of too rigid structures, completely apart and not touching at all. What I am saying is that it will take time to solve the interrelationship, the arrangement of horizontal and vertical mobility within the system. At the very beginning, there could be mobility post-graduate. In other words, the university colleges and the non-university third level colleges could have reciprocity at post-graduate level, which would be one way to start, particularly in scientific research and so on. What I am asking for is that the Minister and his colleagues, who seem to be more dedicated to the cause than the Minister himself, should give up this idea of the transplant, because the system will reject it, and sensibly bring in a Bill here in respect of which the Minister will get from this side of the House nothing but help, a Bill which will establish the NCEA in its rightful role as a unifying force in the third level non-university sector, awarding certificates, diplomas and degrees.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Keating)

I move the amendment set down in the name of the Minister for Education:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and to substitute the following:

"welcomes the Government's decisions on third-level non-university education as expressed in the terms of reference framed for the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick, the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin, and the re-constituted National Council for Educational Awards."

I want to say, first, that I speak as someone interested and involved in third level education all his life, not involved in the non-university sector but an onlooker at it and someone who, therefore, has not detailed expertise but at least that experience of spending all my adult life in third level education. I want to say, too, that in regard to matters of detail, these are things which are not my job in regard to education and on which I do not propose to touch. I propose to try to raise a fundamental debate on this subject. I thought I would have the opportunity and hoped I would be able to reply to what Deputy Wilson has said and I kept thinking that he was about to come to the point but when he sat down, I found that he did not do so at any stage. Essentially he said two things: what about the NCEA awards and the 80 students in the NIHE down in Limerick? That, with the various nuances, cadences and rhetoric was the sum of what he had to say.

There is a real problem about the inter-relationship of the different bits of third level education. It is not just in Ireland; it is world-wide and it is not just for this moment for a couple of institutions, NCEA and NIHE; it is for decades. It is therefore a large and fundamental problem and one I want to discuss in general terms.

To set out the problem, and, hopefully, to indicate that it is acknowledged to be international, I should like to give a quotation which seems to set the alternatives in regard to third level education in a concise way and in a way that is neutral in regard to Ireland. I wish to quote from a publication of the OECD of 1975, called, "Recurrent Education: Trends and Issues." That report is about the recurrent education which is only a small part of the problem. I am not suggesting that it deals specifically with what we are discussing. Nonetheless the following quotation is relevant and tidy because it sets the matter out neatly:

As far as the relationship between the non-traditional and the traditional sectors of education is concerned governments have so far responded in one of three ways:

(1) by creating what in the United Kingdom has been called, "a binary system", treating the traditional and non-traditional sectors as separate entities;

(2) by regarding post-secondary education as a totality and creating an integrated but diversified system embodying all its institutional manifestations and coordinating them as much as possible.

The report went on to give examples from Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The report continued:

(3) by treating the two sectors as interdependent, for example Norway.

The report goes on to mention France, some states in the United States and the provinces of Canada. I have quoted that to indicate that the problem is world-wide and real. It is real because of the nature of the way third level education evolved. It evolved almost 1,000 years ago in one of its current components, in the university bit. That was a narrow speciality to produce the literate and expert people needed to run society, to produce a ruling elite.

Many of the things that have since become incorporated into what is done in third level university education originated right outside it in totally different circumstances. One example is the origin of surgery, in barbers guilds which has been subsumed into what is now understood as third level university education. There are many other examples. In the last 200 years, and with increasing and, recently with explosive speed, we have had a revolution in industry and, simultaneously and separately from it, we have had a revolution in technology. Much of that technology and technology-based industry arose from people who were not the product of a university. If one considers the invention of the steam engine, the invention of the aeroplane, the Bairds, the Edisons or the Bells, none of them came from the university strand. Yet, the things they started produced an ever-growing body of science which became incorporated into university third level education, whether it was from a steam engine, the branches of engineering, the bits of thermodynamics that became the engineering and science and physics faculties. What has happened is that two separate things have grown up. One of the technological sides related to the industrial revolution but becoming, from simple beginnings more and more complex because there is now nothing more complex than the mathematics of computers. There is nothing more complex than advanced aeronautics.

Having started with a skilled man with good hands making a product to fill a need it evolved into something at the very pinnacle of complexity of human understanding, of human elaboration and of human science and was therefore taken into and absorbed into what is a university. Those sort of people are profoundly needed in society. The two strands started separately and are, inevitably, moving together. The task, especially for a country like Ireland which has to catch up in the industrial and technological revolution and which has to use its resources to the best advantage because we are poor in relation to this sort of expenditure, in relation to the buying of computers and the big physics machines and the heavy research expenditures, is to put those components, which exist in every country going through the evolution that we are going through, together in the way which is most humane, most national, most efficient in the use of resources and, above all, that is most guaranteed to enlarge human liberty and to break down the compartments between different bits of human knowledge and culture.

It is easy to formulate that task and I have indicated that the response to it has been different in different countries. In regard to the binary system, I am depressed that Deputy Wilson did not seem to think that anything else was possible.

Mr. Wilson

I read that, for example.

Mr. Keating

He talked fine but it did not seem to affect what he said because he seemed to think that the task was one of putting the two strands of the binary system together, humanely and rationally. The whole point of the Government policy is that the existence of those two strands is a bad thing and that it ought to be ended. It cannot be ended violently and suddenly. The whole thrust of policy should be to do nothing that will perpetuate the division and to do everything that will make the fusion of those two strands possible in a humane, democratic and reasonable way.

Mr. Wilson

If I could believe that the proposals would do that, I would go along with them one hundred per cent but I do not believe they would.

Mr. Keating

At least we are finding some common ground on an objective. I have spent enough time talking about the way in which these different components of third level evolved. There is, what one might call, a debating point in saying that not to have certificates, diplomas and degrees awarded by the same institution is divisive. It seems to me —I say this sincerely—that it is no more that a debating point. The leaving certificate is a certificate of a particular narrow sort of knowledge. Is the argument that the same institution should award a leaving certificate as awards the BA and not to have the certificate and degree awarded by the same institution is divisive? That is a semantic argument. It is not an argument about the core——

Mr. Wilson

Will the Minister accept that the secondary educators have been complaining for years that the university requirements have had too severe an effect on the leaving certificate? That is precisely my argument in regard to the degree at the top of the technological sector.

Mr. Keating

In that case I diametrically misunderstood the Deputy because I thought that the thrust of his argument was that to have degrees, diplomas and certificates awarded in any other way than by the same institution was devisive and the only source of unity was to have them all given by the same institution. I quoted an example from the secondary to university stream, one of the strands, to indicate that that is not a demand that is necessary, practical or advantageous. We have one stream going through from primary to secondary to university third level and, of course, we can have certificates awarded at one level and degrees awarded at the other level. It is only a semantic argument in favour of unity to say that if we want unity we should give them all the different degrees.

I am using the word "degrees" in two senses. We can scrub it out. All the different sorts of indications of a particular skill should be given by the same institution. The core of it is really about a unified system or a binary system.

What interests me in the reaction of the Opposition—it interests me, but it does not surprise me because I say, with regret, that over the period I can remember their existence and, indeed, over the half century they are celebrating this year of their existance—is that they seem to have reversed their position from being genuinely radical, genuinely full of innovations to now being profoundly conservative and opportunist.

Mr. Wilson

I deny that and most people in the country would not believe it.

Mr. Keating

There is no better example of a profound conservatism coupled with an opportunist resistance to change.

Mr. Wilson

I must protest. We established the RTCs, the NIAE and the NCEA.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister must be allowed to speak.

Mr. Keating

The Deputy may protest until he is black in the face.

Mr. Wilson

The Minister should face the issues.

Mr. Keating

I am trying to face the issues. I am trying to look down the road, not for now but for ten, 20 and 30 years, to say there is no long-term solution in the binary system, that in the binary system there is injustice, and inequality, and the separation into compartments of things which should not be separated. There is the division of culture on the one hand and that which is characterised as non-culture on the other hand. Culture is indivisible. Culture is a human unity and the institutions for conveying that culture ought to be as unified as possible.

Mr. Wilson

The Minister is quoting what I said the last time we had this debate.

Mr. Keating

The Deputy may wish that end result but, if he wishes the end, why does he not wish the means? If he wishes the end of the unity of culture and the equality of those people to whom it is being passed on in our institutions, does he wish unequal and divided institutions? That is the profound illogic in his position.

Mr. Wilson

The Minister is not unifying them by putting a pitch-cap on top of the three levels. The Minister is so suave that people might believe him.

Mr. Keating

I keep coming back to the central thought. I am not impressed by arguments about status. I am opposed to differences of class and differences of the special position.

Mr. Wilson

Hear, hear.

Mr. Keating

I am pleased to hear Deputy Wilson feels the same. His feelings and my feelings are not particularly relevant to the reality. The reality is that if you locate the second strand in better buildings, with higher pay, and fewer students, and worse research facilities, and less technicians, it will not enjoy the social prestige of the old——

Mr. Wilson

Why should the Minister do that? He is not doing it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must not interrupt. The Minister has a limited time.

Mr. Keating

Let us look at the reality not just in Ireland but all over the world. The Deputy quoted something about German education. If one can judge by the cultural, and economic, and technological and scientific successes of Germany, there is something damn good about their education. Lincoln said about a general who was drinking whiskey that if people would only find out what whiskey it was and send it to his other generals, they might improve. If we look at the performance of Germany in the world we ought to be impressed by their educational system. If we look at the performance of the Scandinavian countries, and particularly Sweden, we ought to be profoundly impressed by their educational system. What the Opposition want to do is to nail us to the binary system characterised by the OECD uniquely as the British system, and who wants the scientific, the cultural, the technological, the educational performance of the United Kingdom? I say that with no contempt for them, but merely observing that over a century and a half for them it has been downhill all the way, and recently rather rapidly. If you want to make comparisons between different countries and their general performance, or particular performance, in particular sectors, stay away from the British example, and stay away from what the British do, because it has not been so good.

Mr. Wilson

I advised that philosophy for the Government.

Mr. Keating

But the Deputy wants a binary system.

Mr. Wilson

I do not want a binary system.

Mr. Keating

Words lose their meaning.

Mr. Wilson

The Minister should not claim that what they have is a comprehensive system, because it is not a comprehensive system in any way.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister is not being allowed time to make his statement.

Mr. Keating

The system which exists is a system of inequality. It is a system where certain people have access ultimately to the leavers of power and certainly to the better jobs. There is not equality of pay; there is not equality of status; there is not equality of the sort of people who want to get in; there is not equality of building quality; there is not equality of technicians; there is not equality of research opportunity; there is no equality at all.

Mr. Wilson

What is wrong with the building in Limerick?

Mr. Keating

I have been to Limerick. That is an interjection of a single instance which proves the point that there is no equality. One can go out of Ireland and look at the binary system in Britain. There is no equality in the binary system. What there is is the division of culture, the diminution of respect for the sort of technological things that are done in the other strand of the binary system. We have an immense economic need at the moment. It is not for more lawyers, or more pure scientists, or more doctors or, indeed, more veterinarians. It is precisely for that sector who represent the new skills——

Mr. Wilson

I agree.

Mr. Keating

——the new industry, the new technology. They should come right to the forefront of our society to have the highest jobs with the most prestige in third level education and the highest jobs with the most prestige in our society.

Mr. Wilson

The Minister spent less on R and D than any other Minister in the EEC.

Mr. Keating

That is the need of this country and the profound irrelevance of the last interjection, which I hope is recorded, will indicate that at a certain moment the Deputy had to turn away from the argument and try to cloud the issue.

Mr. Wilson

I am in agreement with the Minister but he is not acting in accordance with his philosophy.

Mr. Keating

Economically we need just the sort of people of the technological strand, of the new strand, to come right to the forefront of our life in every possible aspect, in terms of their decision-making, in terms of their prestige, in terms of their presence in this House, in terms of legislation, in terms of changing and modernising our society. We have a structure which in the past has made that impossible. Deputy Wilson in the name of progress, God help us, and the reversal of the meaning of words, defends that system when a better one is available——

Mr. Wilson

The Minister's one is not better.

Mr. Keating

——and when the profoundly progressive and revolutionary and forward-looking thing the Government proposed was to end that system——

Mr. Wilson

Revolutionary—you thing.

Mr. Keating

——not instantly, at a stroke of the axe, but by a process of evolution and discussion, the key not to this year, or next year, but to our future in 20 years, and also the key to making the universities open and humane because they need to have that branch of human knowledge added on to their curriculum as well. When you analyse the choice between a unified system, a comprehensive system, on the one hand, and a binary system on the other, there is no possible serious argument for the binary system. We have the extraordinary and to me sad prospect of a party who have done radical things, and have been on the side of innovation, and have been on the side of change, now, for reasons which I even find it hard to analyse, lining up for the thruppenny bit's worth of opportunist intervention on behalf of the people who are afraid of change.

Mr. Wilson

Not a bit.

Mr. Keating

They are in the extraordinary position that they are unable even to debate the alternatives as Deputy Wilson showed himself in his speech opening this motion. It is our amendment, but it is his resolution. He had the opening position, and he could not set out the alternatives.

Mr. Wilson

I did.

Mr. Keating

He could not look down the road a decade or two decades. He could not enunciate the problems. He could not realise there were different ways of solving the problems.

Mr. Wilson

Read what I said.

Mr. Keating

He had to play opportunist tricks about handfuls of people at this moment. It is deeply depressing to think of a party of the traditions of the Opposition party, whatever one thinks of the party in general——

Mr. Wilson

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

Mr. Keating

——a party with radical traditions. It is deeply depressing that Deputy Wilson who I have been told is a good teacher. I agree with many of his ideas about culture and its role in society. When he speaks my reaction is: "That is fine. I feel the same way". But, please, can he not see that the effect of the binary system is to slow up the recognition of the new knowledge and its use in our society? Can he not see what it is doing in a world that is becoming more and more fragmented, where Snow was writing about two cultures long before we raised the question, where the two cultures are a real problem?

Mr. Wilson

It is one. Two aspects of one culture.

Mr. Keating

The technical aspect of the new knowledge is as valid as the old knowledge.

Mr. Wilson

I agree. We are shadow boxing.

Mr. Keating

Yet we want to keep these two things apart. Does the Deputy not know academics need to be brought into contact with their own knowledge and what they will pass on to the world? Does the Deputy not know the universities must be opened up as much as third level institutions in a policy?

Mr. Wilson

I think we are on the same side.

Mr. Keating

Then why can the Deputy not agree to unify them?

Mr. Wilson

Because the method adopted is wrong.

Mr. Keating

Why does the Deputy not accept the full thrust of policy? I am not talking about the detail. I am talking about the whole thrust of policy and everything the Minister for Education has done fits into the pattern of moving up possible, reasonable and democratic steps, but consistant, coherent steps, towards a unified system. With the history of the past we cannot impose a unified system. We cannot kick people into it. We have to do it by talking and persuading. We cannot wield the big stick. We cannot abolish jobs and destroy people's prospects of promotion. We have to do it by nudging them in the direction of a completely unified and humane and completely democratic single culture solution.

Mr. Wilson

But not that way.

Mr. Keating

That is what we have to do and, in my view, everything the Minister for Education has done and is doing is moving in that direction. All the bits fit into the pattern —not of wielding the big stick but of urging people and persuading people and coaxing people towards a solution so much better than the alternative that I continue to be filled with amazement that the Opposition can oppose it. We are, I think, seeing an irony in Irish political life and I am glad the Minister for Education is sitting beside me to hear me say this because I would rather say it in his presence.

The Minister has been given the reputation of being a conservative by certain sectors.

Mr. Wilson

By whom?

Mr. Keating

I believe the media have done it.

Mr. Wilson

Would the Minister believe the Labour Party conference in Galway did it? They did.

Mr. Keating

That is a fair comment.

Mr. Wilson

All my comments are fair.

Mr. Keating

The effect of that image has prevented people from realising that the policy for third level which he is espousing and bringing on in reasonable and patient steps to fruition is the most radical thing ever offered to third level education in the history of the State. That is the truth of it but the image, even to intelligent people, has obscured that truth. It has obscured it from the students and I would appeal to the students, through the medium of this Parliament, to think deeply enough and look at the issue and not take sides superficially and light heartedly because they think x, y or z is liberal or x, y or z is conservative. Let them look at it and if they look at it, then how can they possibly believe that the maintenance of a binary system is democratic and, leading to the second strain in our cuture, has a fair place and a fair role? The students protest under the banners of progress and principle and they seem to me to be——

Mr. Wilson

That is because they do not think the system is comprehensive. That is why. Nobody is convinced of that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister's time is limited but the Deputy persists in interrupting. The Deputy is behaving very badly.

Mr. Wilson

I know I am. Sorry.

Mr. Keating

It may be they do not think it but, if they analyse the steps that are being taken, they will find that what I say is the truth. If you want instant action you wield the big stick. If you want democratic and humane action, you have to be patient. All the steps are towards comprehensiveness and towards a libertarian solution and towards the end of class domination in third level education, and towards equality of opportunity in third level education, and towards the abolition of two cultures in third level education. They are profoundly radical steps which I —in this particular context you can attach any labels you like and I will proudly accept them—am profoundly glad to be associated with, profoundly glad to be associated with this progressive policy, a policy which in retrospect will be looked upon as one of the most important innovations in the first term in office of a Coalition Government.

Mr. Faulkner

It is indicative of where control of this particular facet of education lies that we have the Minister for Industry and Commerce concerning himself so deeply with educational matters on a Private Members' motion on higher education. I have no doubt his purpose is to ensure that his colleague, the Minister for Education, takes a proper attitude towards the Cabinet sub-committee which the Minister for Education so obviously dislikes. He knows that the sub-committee overturned and disregarded all the long, tedious work done over the years in an endeavour to give the best possible facilities available to third level education and substituted the results of a few discussions which, of necessity, had got to be very short because of the duties of the Ministers involved.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce appears to think he has only to throw charges across the floor of the House and, the doing of that makes them true, such as the statements he made about our attitude—as he states it—about the binary system. In the last debate on higher education the Minister for Education wanted to know whether or not we favoured the binary system and I told him our record in relation to comprehensive education was second to none and proof of that is there for anyone who wishes to see it. I myself endeavoured to the best of my ability as Minister to ensure comprehensive education was available to all our young people through, for example, the community school system and I can say now to this Government that I got very little support or help from them in my efforts to make comprehensive education available at second level. There was no reason to believe that, having proceeded along these particular lines in secondary education, we would not continue them in third level education.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce spoke about bringing the two systems together in a humane way. That is exactly what we wanted and, as Deputy Wilson has already stated, it cannot be done in a humane way if we are unconcerned about the consequences of our actions to one of the streams. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce thinks that handing out degrees by a particular university which is not associated with the institution attended by the students is a new system of comprehensive education he has quite a considerable amount to learn.

The Minister spoke here in an airyfairy way about the differences between the facilities available in relation to the two strands of education. Surely the building and the facilities at the higher institute in Limerick are better than those that are available in some of our universities. If one were to follow in a logical way what the Minister said, does this mean that precedence is being given to the technical and technological side? I do not think that is what he meant but he did not show very much logic in his argument.

One of the most important factors which should exercise the mind of the Minister in coming to a decision on a matter of this kind is the fact that the students are demanding that the degrees be awarded by the National Council of Educational Awards. One should remember that it is not as though the students were expressing dissatisfaction with an older system and demanding that procedures relating to the award of degrees by UCD or TCD should be changed in a radical way. In circumstances such as that one could appreciate the need for slow, careful and thorough examination of such a request and its possible objection.

Here we are faced with an entirely new set of circumstances. The National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick admitted its first students in 1972 and they were enrolled in five major study areas. The work of this new college was based primarily on a technological content with a significant element of the humanities. The new institute is something new in Irish education. In my view it has a significant contribution to make to third level education in Ireland in providing us with a new and increasingly important form of higher education. Its primary purpose is the application of scientific knowledge and method and it is a type of education that had been lacking previously to a great extent.

In the new institute in Limerick we have a third-level institute which has an opportunity never before afforded to any body to develop completely in its own way without being restricted by the tradition and usage of a university. It has an opportunity of achieving an eminence which would place the National Institute of Higher Education at Limerick in the forefront of non-university education in the world. By endeavouring to place third-level technical and technological education under the aegis of the universities, by giving the universities the right to award degrees in the NIHE, the Government are taking from the institute the power to continue to develop on its own lines. In my view it is placing a restriction on it which cannot but harm the future of the institute.

The Government have suggested that the status of the institute in Limerick would be enhanced by having degrees awarded by the universities. As I said on a previous occasion when debating higher education here, such a line of thinking could emanate only from the minds of the academics in the Government who have little or no appreciation of technical or technological education. To them an aura attaches to academic education which places it in a category far above technical and technological education and, in such circumstances, the attitude of the Government could be regarded as logical. Of course it is not logical because it is based on a wrong premise. University and non-university third-level education are equal partners so far as this party are concerned and neither can claim precedence over the other. It can be said that far more young people can reach fulfilment and can have their attitudes and abilities developed to the fullest extent in the technical field than they can in the academic field.

I am convinced that should the National Council of Educational Awards have the authority on a statutory basis to award degrees to students in the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick the institute will have a real opportunity to attain an eminent place in the world of education. From the knowledge I have of the director of the institute and of the staff, I have no doubt that within a relatively short time the degrees will achieve a distinction and a status of their own which will redound to the credit of the institute and of the country. What the Minister is offering them is second-rate qualification. He is asking the students in that institute to accept qualifications from a university which cannot possibly have the necessary deep insight into the objectives of the courses there. In my view, the degrees would simply be labels which have very little meaning.

I have no doubt about the competence and the capacity of the National Council of Educational Awards to award degrees. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to have a look at the NCEA and its background. When the regional technical colleges were being set up we were concerned that the awards gained as a result of attendance at regional technical colleges and colleges of technology should be seen to have a nationally recognisable status. In this way it would enhance the attractiveness of the courses offered in these colleges and would encourage young people to attend them. The then Government referred the matter of establishing a body that would award national qualifications to the Higher Education Authority. At that time practically all the awards were external as to the syllabus, the contents, standards and examinations. Because of this the professional involvement of the teachers concerned was very restrictive and I thought this was unfortunate.

Another important point was that in many instances the objectives, standards and conditions pertaining to these awards did not reflect to any great degree our particular needs or the educational structures within which we operated. The number and variety of the awards led to difficulty in assessing their comparative standards and it caused considerable confusion in the minds of the public as to the educational merit and the intrinsic worth of the qualifications. Another drawback arose from the fact that where the Government, college or intitution indentified a particular national, regional or local need which could not be suitably met by the courses and by the examinations set up by these outside organisations, there was no way in which the qualifications designed to serve that need could attain the esteem and respect which other established but in many instances less suitable qualifications enjoyed, no matter how high the standard of the individual college or institution.

Obviously then, the existing system of awards could neither continue to meet the needs of existing colleges nor have any prospect of extension to fill the requirements of third level non-university education which had significantly expanded through the addition of the regional technical colleges and the College of Physical Education and the Institute of Higher Education in Limerick. In many cases the achievement of natural self-sufficiency in this field was desirable and could have been achieved by pooling the expertise of people from the universities, from the fields of technical and general education, from industry, from the professions, from research and so on.

The HEA reported favourably on the proposals and the Government decided that because of the urgency that attached to such a body commencing their operations quickly they should be established on an ad hoc basis pending the introduction of legislation to grant them statutory powers. In 1971 the Government decided that legislation should be prepared to establish the NCEA on an ad hoc basis. The HEA had been prepared to meet the demands and the needs of industry and of potential technological students for more advanced technological and other specialised courses and for the formal recognition of such courses and qualifications which would be awarded on the conclusion of these courses, and they suggested that the NCEA should be established on the following basis: first, to grant certificates, diplomas and degrees to persons who had successfully completed courses of study in third level institutions other than universities; to determine the conditions governing the granting of such awards; and third, to approve courses of study to be pursued by candidates in order to qualify for such awards, including appropriate arrangements for industrial and commercial experience in association with such courses.

When it became apparent to me that it would not be possible to have the proposed legislation prepared and enacted in sufficient time to allow the statutory councils to be set up and to enable them to assess study programmes which the students in the regional technical colleges had been following since 1970, I felt I should immediately establish the council on an ad hoc basis. Apart from the fact that there was an urgent need pending the establishment of the NCEA, I felt it would also be useful as it had been in the case of HEA, to have the NCEA in operation before legislation was brought in so that we would have the experience which we had in relation to the HEA before legislation was brought in. That was very useful in relation to the HEA because that body had been born under a cloud of suspicion. There had been considerable controversy surrounding the matter, many people expressing the feeling that the authority would be simply an instrument of the Department of Education. The HEA soon laid that bogey and confidence grew because of the freedom of action allowed to them, and when the Bill was brought in it was possible to discuss it on its merits rather than personalities.

The NCEA were established in 1972 and consisted of a chairman and 21 members, together with a director. The other members were persons of eminence in the fields of education, both secondary and third level, from the university and non-university sectors, and persons of wide experience in industry, commerce, public administration and other fields. The chairman was Mr. John Nagle, former Secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. The council included seven members who were professors in Irish universities, six who held posts in institutions of higher education other than universities, seven were engaged in industry, agriculture and commerce and public administration and three had experience in post-primary education.

The function of the NCEA is to promote, to encourage, co-ordinate and develop technical, industrial, commercial, technological and scientific education and, in association with them, liberal education, and to award certificates, diplomas and degrees for courses pursued at recognised third level institutions other than universities.

I have gone into detail on the early days of the NCEA, their composition and their purpose, to illustrate how competent that body were clearly to understand the problems involved. There is no question in my mind that such a body must of necessity have a clear perception of their objectives and the means by which these objectives can be achieved. That must be the body best entitled to award qualifications at all levels including third level, and quite clearly students who followed those courses had the same belief.

The Minister and the Government appear to think that by insisting that the universities award degrees to students at third level, the non-university third level institutions are achieving a unified third level structure. Listening to the Minister for Industry and Commerce today, one would believe this is all that is necessary. In my view it achieves nothing. Instead, it is much more likely to damage the system which it appears to be their objective to enhance. Our educational system, secondary schools at second level and universities at third level, is long established and deep-rooted. Our technological side is relatively young and unless carefully nurtured it will be swamped, particularly at third level. The vocational school system has been in existence for only a few years. Up to the 1960s, the highest certificate available in them was the group certificate in two-day courses. Later, the intermediate certificate was introduced and with the introduction of free education it was obvious we could no longer be satisfied. To redress these problems and to increase the proportion of the numbers entering the technical schools, the leaving certificate was introduced in these schools.

Then, the regional technical colleges and the Limerick Institute of Higher education were established and technical and technological education came into their own. Nevertheless, while the system has grown in esteem it is still a relatively fragile growth which must be nurtured. As I said on a number of occasions, I am convinced that with proper handling this branch of our third level education system will grow and mature and will move slowly and gradually towards the other system. On the other hand, the university system is being forced by circumstances to change, and I am very pleased to see it. In recent years it has had to take cognisance of the fact that graduates have to earn their livelihoods and that though education for education's sake is delightful in theory the practical aspect must be catered for.

Because of this, it became clear to me that the universities would perforce move towards a more practical system so that we could ultimately have a unified system provided in a natural and evolving way rather than the enforced marriage which the Minister for Education, but particularly the Minister for Industry and Commerce, want to foist on us for the sake of what I might term socialist principles. I think the Minister for Education would be much more likely to agree with me than with the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 8.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 18th February, 1975.