Ms Joan Donegan:

I hope that all the members of this very important committee have by now had a chance to study the written submission which IFUT has supplied. Since my time today is limited - I had believed it was limited to three minutes - I will extract from our submission those items which are of particular concern to IFUT or which are less likely to be dealt with by other parties invited to address the committee.

The first issue of concern for IFUT is governance. The Bill’s insistence that external representation should constitute a majority in the governance structures is a very negative development put forward without any coherent or sustainable justification. Higher education is different in kind from the provision of other services. The university enterprise has to do with ideas and concepts. Any drift towards giving overarching control to individuals primarily motivated by other concerns, whether business, social, or economic, is entirely inappropriate. IFUT also wishes to emphasise that this part of the Bill, if enacted, will almost certainly have the possibly unintended consequence of leaving less room for representatives of employees. This would be completely counter to the policies of successive Irish Governments to enhance worker participation and industrial democracy.

The second issue of concern relates to valuing original research and enhancing the status of researchers. When Albert Einstein was developing his theory of relativity, he is reported to have said that he believed there was only a handful of scholars in the world who understood his work or appreciated its value. This reminds us that we must always take care to ensure that primary research is valued and is not relegated to a subsidiary role to applied research. If Irish higher education institutes are to be seen as world class, we must allow them to be leaders in the search for new knowledge and not just the application of existing knowledge. IFUT is very worried that we have allowed the belief to take hold that we can, as a nation, prioritise research while simultaneously subjecting the actual researchers to shameful levels of job insecurity and precarious employment. This contradiction is doing huge damage to the attractiveness and reputation of the career of the researcher and is quite shameful in this 21st century.

The third issue of concern is that of academic freedom. The fact that the right to academic freedom is enshrined in Irish legislation through the Universities Act 1997 has long been a source of great pride. IFUT is very proud to have had some input in the development of that Act. However, the fact that academic freedom is barely mentioned at all, and certainly not in any consequential way, in this Bill is worrying. The kind of centralised micro-management of higher education, which is indicated as desirable throughout this Bill as currently worded, prompts us to paraphrase Albert Einstein’s famous quote and suggest that if you insist on measuring everything that is valuable, you will end up valuing only those things that are measurable.

I express our sincere thanks to the committee for giving us this opportunity to have an input into your deliberations. I wish members great success in their very important work.