Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the contributors. In a broad sense, this Bill has to address the problems and look at what success means. Funding is absolutely a key issue for the higher education sector. That was outlined in the Cassells report and we still have not addressed it, so the Bill has to take that on board. It is also really important to look at what it means to be successful in third level education. I sat on a governing authority as a public representative and we spent a huge amount of time coming up with a strategic plan for the university. One of the key things was openness. I will read out for the committee what Professor Ó hÓgartaigh wrote in the opening statement in that strategic plan:

We recognise that we cannot achieve our ambitions alone. We are a university with no gates. When darkness comes, we don't close. Openness means we welcome friends and strangers in. It also means we go out, seeking new and deeper research co-operation, new ideas, new partnerships, new communities, and new ways of engaging.

That has to be a key part of what governing authorities do. Competency is absolutely key, but it is not just about ensuring we can wash our faces when it comes to money. A university is also a social good. It is not just about the students who are there; in Galway in particular, it also has to encapsulate the entire city in it. That is why it is key that we do not lose that element of having the public involved in the running of the university. That may not look like having a certain number of public representatives but it absolutely cannot be based only on what it means to run an institution. It also has to have that representative element to it. I would like to hear the witnesses' thoughts on that. There are problems with it - do not get me wrong. I got on the governing authority at the flip of a coin and was the only female councillor on it at that time. That goes to our political system as well. Councillor Hoade, in her short time as president of the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, has done a huge amount of work regarding gender balance on local authorities. We have local authorities on which there might be one woman and the rest are men, and that needs to be addressed. It spills over when it comes to the kinds of boards councillors are on, and I was on a number of them. Those are a few of my thoughts on that and about the importance of not just competency but also how the witnesses reflect wider society in the running of their institutions.

There have clearly been some problems, and gender discrimination is one. Do the witnesses think a Bill of this kind will address some of the issues surrounding the lack of transparency that has existed in the past? I think all of us who have served on boards, be they boards of management for schools or for universities, know there have been difficulties. If we are honest and if we look down through the list of the problems with appointments to particular positions within universities, do we think the Bill will address that lack of transparency sufficiently? We definitely had issues in Galway. The landscape has changed in that regard, but we need to make sure that these things do not happen again. That is where accountability comes in.