Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It is a day when few people would prefer to be in a committee room to being somewhere else. It is a testament to the amount of stakeholder consultation that has happened in preparation for this general scheme that nearly all of the feedback provided to this committee at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage has been positive. A few recurring themes have been raised by a number of stakeholders as well as members of the committee. The three that jump out to me include the relationship between the HEA and the Minister, which Senator Malcolm Byrne has already spoken about, so I do not intend to go back to that. The issue of competence versus representation governance structure needs to be returned to. Autonomy of the universities, their research direction and whether we are doing enough to promote primary research as well as applied research is another. It is easier to find funding for applied research but primary research has significant value in and of itself.

I will return to the competency versus representation issue. Many people are worried about that. Deputy Conway-Walsh adverted to Mayo and the GMIT structure. It is a function of this new technological university structure where there will be multiple campuses. I am based in Waterford in the south east. There are similar concerns about the representation that will be provided for in Waterford, Carlow and Wexford. There is possibly some way to go to address those concerns. It probably should not be the case that we feel like each campus needs representation and that it should not be geographically-based but people have significant concerns that this is an issue.

Regarding an adequate voice for the various needs of people within that governance structure, Ms Kenny adverted to the staff representative bodies, which is proxy language for trade unions. I am delighted to see a student voice in there although I think we need to put flesh on the bones of the student forum and how that will work. I imagine that there will be adequate representation from academic voices but I wonder about non-academic people working within the institutions and whether staff representative bodies adequately capture the needs of people who may not be academic or research staff but are working within these institutions. Will Ms Kenny comment on that?

I referred to putting flesh on the bones of various provisions. I know this is only a general scheme. We talk about provisions for engagement with students, equity of access to participation, lifelong learning, data collection and sharing, but I would like to see more detail about how exactly those are going to work. They are fine ideas to have in a general scheme but how will they translate into the actual structure? I want to allow an opportunity for Ms Kenny to respond to the HEA suggestion that section 31 could benefit from a provision for the HEA to recruit, where it may be required, within agreed ceilings or budgets, rather than on a consent per individual post basis.

I have a specific question and I am sorry if I am scatter-gunning with questions. Under heads 29(2) and 30(8), the general scheme constrains the role of the CEO of the new HEA from giving an opinion before either the Committee of Public Accounts or the wider committee structure. Is that normal practice for CEOs in the public sector or is it specific to this role? If it is specific to this role, why was it deemed necessary?

I think the preponderance of those questions are for Ms Kenny rather than Dr. Maguire or Mr. Conlon. I apologise for that.