As this is the only opportunity on which the Seanad can debate the Estimates, I take the opportunity of raising some points on behalf of my own constituency. I make no apology for doing that, since my own constituency was abolished in the Dáil and transferred to the Seanad. Up to a certain point, the members of the university constituencies were able to discuss questions of university finance in the chamber in which those discussions most directly take place, but, since the change in our Constitution, the members for the universities have been transferred to this Chamber and I therefore make no apology for raising these matters very briefly here.
I refer to Vote 26—Universities and Colleges—for which the Estimate is £327,000 and I wish to suggest to the Minister that he might consider whether, on some near future occasion, this sum might not be substantially increased with advantage to the nation. Although I have the honour to represent one of the universities, I am not speaking specifically as a university representative on this occasion. I am not pleading for the interests of the people whom I represent, although, in passing, I might say that I might do so. I do not think it would be improper to say, by way of parenthesis, that University College, Dublin, with which I am particularly associated, has been generally admitted to suffer from inadequate financial accommodation. It started its career just before the first world war, and I need not tell the Minister, who has associations with it even longer than I have, that the buildings commenced in these years have never really been finished and that we are trying to do our work to the best of our ability under very great material disadvantages. We are under-staffed and under-housed and the great national work which we are capable of doing and which we are most anxious to do is being hampered by material handicaps which are really not our fault.
In the peculiar circumstances of this country, the only institution which can reasonably be expected to come to our rescue is the public Exchequer and, therefore, I take this occasion to remind the Minister in public of matters of which I know he has been frequently reminded in private, the growing and pressing needs of my own college. As I say, in this Assembly, I am treating this matter more from the national than from the academic point of view and I suggest that, in this year of grace, 1948, every enlightened country in the world has come to recognise that the most valuable investment which can be made is in the education of its people, that our material progress and the intelligent exploitation of our national resources, our agricultural industry and our non-agricultural industry and our professions, and the intelligent utilisation of these resources in this 20th century age depend on the application of a great deal of scientific knowledge to our land, our industries and our men, that every country which is in the forefront of the world to-day is scientifically-minded and that in the great competitive race in the post-war world, in both the military and industrial fields, those countries which have spent most on research and higher education in the past are in many cases in the van of progress to-day.
It seems to me that this is a country with a very narrow range of national resources and with a population which is generally agreed to be in great need of higher education and that, in view of the great historical tradition of education in the Irish people, even at times when they received that education in conditions of great hardship and great discouragement, and the record of Irish scientists and professional men in England, America and other countries, our people seem to be peculiarly adapted to benefit by higher education. I suggest that the investment of a greater sum in scientific education would yield an abundant dividend to the nation.
There are differences of opinion regarding the best method of conducting industrial research. I certainly have no hesitation in stating my opinion, that applied science and applied research is never really satisfactory, unless it rests on the basis of the greatest possible amount of free academic research, without any practical motive behind it.
It is not too much to say at the present moment that the world is divided into areas where the scientists are harnessed to ideological and practical results and other countries where the tradition of academic freedom still allows scientists to roam freely at their will over their own subject without any regard to any immediate practical material application. I think that the experience of the two great wars has shown that the countries with a tradition of free scientific research without any desire to obtain immediate material rewards have proved the more efficient when they tested themselves in the field of action against countries where research has been directed to mere practical and mere utilitarian ends. If that is so, it seems to me that the correct place for research to take place is in the universities. The universities are institutions that have a tradition of academic freedom. They house staffs who are not prepared simply to give their activities for any particular practical ideological or utilitarian end.
The essence of academic freedom is that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and I certainly say that in all the Irish universities that tradition has been very well maintained. I do suggest that in our universities here we have staffs that are capable of doing a great deal to advance scientific research and that if that scientific research is allowed to be freely conducted in the universities, it is only a matter of time until its agricultural and industrial applications yield a great dividend to the nation. Therefore, putting it merely on the material plain, speaking simply on mere financial calculation of material gain and loss, leaving aside all considerations regarding the cultural advantages of the universities, I think there is to be made at the present time an unanswerable case for a greatly increased investment in university education.
I want to direct the Minister's attention to a comparison between the figures of the grants for university education in this country and in England and Wales in the last ten years. The figures in relation to England and Wales are taken from an article in The Economist of the week before last, but I have no doubt that they are fully reliable figures. The source of their origin is stated there. In the financial year 1938-39, the last pre-war year, the amount in the Irish Estimates for universities and colleges was £160,000. In the present Estimate it is £327,000, which is slightly more than double. When one makes allowance for the fact that the value of money has depreciated quite considerably in the interval, the real resources made available for the universities in the last ten years have not been increased by more, I should think, than about 30 or 40 per cent. and certainly, speaking in relation to my own university, the endowment of the universities per student has not increased, on a rough calculation by more than 10 or 20 per cent., when allowance is made for the growth of the student population and the depreciation in the value of money.
In England and Wales, countries that have been through the ravages of a great war, which we have largely escaped, the story is entirely different. The grants to English and Scottish universities, leaving out Northern Ireland, in the year 1938-39, through the University Grants Commission, were £2,500,000. In the present year, 1948-49, the grants to be made through the University Grants Commission are £11,888,000. That is to say, instead of being twice what they were, as in this country, they are nearly five times what they were. In addition to that sum of £11,888,000, the British Government this year is granting by way of State scholarships, mostly to ex-Servicemen, and therefore not to be regarded as more than temporary, but in fact a source of revenue for the present year, £11,960,000. So that in relation to the universities in England and Wales in the present year, the estimated revenue from State funds, over and above their own considerable resources, which are much greater than ours, and over and above their students' fees, which are also higher than ours, and over and above the grant received from the local authorities, which are also higher than ours, is in the neighbourhood of £24,000,000 as compared with, in this country, something in the neighbourhood of £327,000. When you take into account that the English population is about 16 times as great as ours, when you take into account that these grants are something like 70 times as great, you see that in relation to head of population, the endowment of university education in this country seems to lag seriously behind.
I am simply giving these figures, not because the Minister is not aware of them already, but because I feel it my duty to put on record, on the only occasion on which university representatives have, the inadequate support which the universities are receiving from the Government which I may say, in passing, I know is nothing but friendly to the universities but still seems to have rather old-fashioned views regarding the duty of Government to universities to-day.
I want now to refer to Vote 28. The grant to the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies is £52,000. The Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies is, of course, a body for which everybody must have the greatest possible admiration. It is not for me, in view of what I have said earlier, to criticise the body because its researches are, not in the air, but in the cosmic space between the various galaxies in the heavens, but certainly very far detached from real life. Therefore, it may be that, in the long run, the research that is conducted in this admirable institution may yield some sort of dividend to the country apart altogether from the excellence of having higher research of this kind done here. At the same time, I cannot help thinking that the contrast between the £327,000 for the universities and the £52,000 for the Institute of Advanced Studies is scarcely great enough.
I would have thought, in relation to any possible dividend that could be yielded to the country on the expenditure of money on higher education, that, if the Institute of Advanced Studies is worth £52,000 a year, the two great universities in this country are worth more than £350,000. In other words, that in the light of the size of the staff, the number of students attending, the general body of duties, the expense of one sort or another, that if £52,000 is an appropriate sum for the Institute of Advanced Studies, something very much greater would be appropriate for the universities.
I am sorry for delaying the Seanad with these, I might say, domestic matters but, as I say, since the Constitution was altered, we have no opportunity of raising our voices in the Dáil.