Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 150:

In page 66, to delete lines 12 to 32.

I have engaged extensively, as I know the Minister and others on the committee have, with this sector over recent months, and it is clear that the management of every institution accepted the need for the highest standard of transparency and accountability for public finances. That is beyond question. The Government will always have our support for any policy that achieves that. There are, however, many proposals in the Bill that reduce the autonomy of institutes without any clear relationship with transparency or accountability, and I have yet to see or hear a convincing justification for dictating such rigid governance structures such as the mandatory 17-member limit on the governing bodies. The Technological Universities Act 2018 allowed for a governing authority of 22 to 26. The Minister has changed the position since the general scheme was issued, and now the right number on the governing authority is 17. I put it to the Minister, however, that the reason the number keeps changing is that there is no magic number and no one size that fits all. The people best placed to come up with the right size of the governing authority are the institutions themselves. These are unpaid positions, and every governing body has its own unique make-up and tradition. The removal of the broad representation on the governing bodies will be a real loss, I believe.

It is unfair to say that this legislation will move the sector to a competency-based governance model. Governing bodies are currently made up of members of academic and non-academic bodies, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, the alumni, the local authority nominees, trade union representatives, employers' organisations and others. The expertise is vitally important, particularly in the more technical areas such as financial reporting. However, we should not limit the value of the contribution and valuable input from a wide variety of people. The Minister should look again at the rigid, overly prescriptive governance structures and a fair approach that can be applied to everyone without damaging the unique characteristics and differentiated missions of the different institutions.

The Bill curtails staff representation on the governing bodies and assumes without any actual evidence that having a majority of external members is superior. It takes an upstairs-downstairs attitude to both academic and professional staff, who are not seen as worthy of significant influence in the governance of their own institutions. There are clearly established dangers in shrinking governing bodies so dramatically. The risks in terms of the loss of expertise are significant for organisations as complex as the higher education institutions, particularly the larger ones. Five internal members of staff is a very small number to bring all the competencies required to the table of the governing body. Also, there is no indication that more ministerial nominees will lead to greater diversity. In the past, ministerial or external nominees have had a strong bias towards business and corporate appointments. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions made an excellent submission to the consultation on the Bill and pointed out that the academic institutions with the highest reputations and the most effective track records worldwide are those that enjoy the highest levels of autonomy. It is hardly a coincidence that the two highest ranking universities in the UK, Oxford and Cambridge, are precisely those where governance by academics has not been diluted by external governance influence. Closer to home, Trinity is the highest ranking of the universities in Ireland and in this Bill has been singled out to protect its autonomy.

During debates on the Universities Act 1997, the then Minister for Education attracted criticism for proposing a minimum of three ministerial nominees on governing bodies that varied between 20 to 30 members. The current Minister is proposing boards of 17 with a majority of external nominees and a minority of staff from each institution, with the exception of Trinity, but here too the proposed changes to the governing body will reduce staff representation and curtail the number of elected staff members to the board of TCD. The governing body's size should be adequate to accommodate all stakeholders, students, staff, alumni, funders, enterprise partners, local communities, government and society. This can be provided for without compromising a feature of governance which has been proven worldwide to be appropriate for institutes of higher education.

The provision for boards of 17 members is too rigid and I would like the Minister to look at it again.

I am thinking as well about the Atlantic Technological University and the whole scope that covers in the counties that it has to represent. I cannot see how a number of 17 would do that. I will be a bit parochial. We need Mayo and other places to be represented as well. We need a bit more room there.