I move amendment No. 2a:
In page 3, before section 4, to insert the following new section:
"4.—Section 5 of the Act of 1980 is hereby amended—
(a) in subsection (4), by the deletion of the words ‘the Government on the recommendation of';
(b) in paragraph (a) of subsection (4)—
(i) by the deletion of ‘nine' and the substitution therefor of ‘four', and
(ii) by the deletion of ‘on the recommendation of' and the substitution therefor of ‘by'; and
(c) in paragraph (b) of subsection (4), by the deletion of ‘three' and the substitution therefor of ‘eight'.".
This amendment encapsulates two different concepts and I would have been happier if they had been kept separate. I do not want to tie the Minister down by linking the two. The separate concepts are that the role of the Government and the Minister should be confined to the direct appointments being made on the recommendation of the Minister and that the other appointments, whether by way of election or nomination by bodies, should be made directly. The practical difference is small. It would appear that the Minister would have to accept the appointments resulting from elections and nominations by certain bodies.
If this university is to have the full acceptance of institutions elsewhere it is very important that the Government's role should not appear to be greater than it is. There is nothing to be gained by interposing the Minister and the Government between the bodies which elect and nominate and the actual legal implementation. It is in the old Act for reasons which I never understood. The deletions proposed in my amendment would produce a wording which would have the same practical effect as that in the original Act, but from the point of view of anybody concerned about the role of the Government in this institution the position would become very much better. It would provide that there would be 23 members and that the first members would be appointed by the Government on the recommendation of the Minister. After the expiration of the term of office of the first members of the governing body, the 23 ordinary members of that body would be appointed in the following manner: nine of them would be appointed by the Minister in accordance with the provisions of the section. Three would be chosen by the academic staff. The Minister and the Government are taken out of the other appointments. The Minister has no role. If three people are elected by the academic staff the Minister has not the power to nominate them. What is the point of including the Minister and giving an impression of Government interference which does not exist?
The two small changes I am suggesting to eliminate a few words would solve the whole problem. I would ask the Minister to take a look at this. Her officials may devise a more elegant way but this seems the simplest way to achieve the objective of creating a body which will be reasonably similar to other universities, where the Minister has power to appoint some members and the others are chosen by other means.
A separate point which has been incorporated into a single amendment, which was not my original intention, is designed to modify the relative proportions nominated by the Minister and elected by the academic staff. The proportions as proposed are totally out of line with what one would expect in any university. In the NUI Senate there are four members nominated by the Government, one of whom shall be a woman — there were far-sighted legislators in 1908. Then there are nominations coming from a number of sources, from graduates and from the academic council, of whom a certain minimum must be members of the academic staff. The result is that in the NUI Senate there are no nominations by any outside body other than the Minister, thus giving the university clear autonomy. In this case the vast bulk of the nominations come from the Minister or outside bodies. It should be looked at again.
We should not treat universities as if they must be under such tutelage that outside bodies must nominate so many members. This does not happen in the NUI. Even in Queen's University, Belfast, in 1908 there were only two provisions for outside nominations by some curious bodies I never heard of before. I suppose they must still exist for the purpose of nominating. In the National University there were none. I know we cannot go into this since the Minister is not changing the whole structure. The one change she could make, as clear evidence of a will to demonstrate the autonomy of this body, her confidence in the academic staff and in its capacity to contribute to its own running, would be to modify the number of membership so the number she appointed would be the same as in the NUI. Why does she need more control of these universities or more involvement in the NUI and of the academic staff. Three out of 23 appointments is ludicrous; it would be ludicrous even in a second level institution and if they were governors of a school or something one would do better than that. I am only raising it to eight — I think the figure should be greater — because I do not want to suggest to the Minister that she should reduce her appointments to lower than the figure in the NUI which is a reasonable figure of four, and that the residue of those then are transferred over to the academic staff. What emerges from that is not satisfactory. It is not the kind of governing body a university should have, but we cannot do better than that today. It is no good trying to play around with the thing any more than that. This is a very small change. If the Minister could bring herself to make it she would at least demonstrate to the two institutions concerned that she has the confidence and trust in them which the Government have in the NUI.
I do not think the Minister has similar appointments in Dublin University but that is a more antique body; at least she would put these universities on a par with the NUI. I would suggest these two separate points. They are incorporated in one amendment. I am quite prepared to accept it if the Minister takes them separately. If she is of a mind to accept one and not the other then on Report Stage a bit of redrafting would achieve that but I would hope she would accept both of them as a demonstration of her concern to give these bodies the kind of status they should have, a status equivalent to that of the NUI and Dublin University.