Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I want to put my own satisfaction and delight at the announcement of the new veterinary college places on the record, particularly in Mountbellew, where I went to school myself. It is a tidy and thriving town. It will be good for those students, and they will be good for Mountbellew. We might meet some of those students in training when the vets come out in the middle of the night to look at a cow, as occasionally happens.

I raise the issue of the Athena Swan charter with the Minister. I thank him and the Department for the briefing note on it. There is concern among quite a few academics in this country that the Athena Swan charter - which, as the Minister knows, started out with high ideals as a body to progress the equality of the sexes and gender equality in higher education and research - has become a kind of an ideological monster that could threaten people's academic freedom. With respect to the Cathaoirleach, I have a couple of specific questions for the Minister about this, but it is important to set out the background here. The Athena Swan charter was a pre-Brexit import from the UK. In its UK form, it has changed. For one thing, access to funding for higher education research in the UK is not dependent, strictly, on compliance with the Athena Swan charter's principles. There are other possibilities. That is not the case in Ireland.

The Higher Education Authority has explicitly stated that higher education institutions stand to lose access to research funding if they do not achieve Athena Swan awards within a set timeframe. The problem with that is, aspects of the Athena Swan charter agenda have become quite ideological and involve some contestable ideas in a way that could frustrate and victimise academics in the exercise of their academic freedom. To give an example, there is a commitment required to foster collective understanding that intersectional inequalities must be accounted for and a commitment to fostering collective understanding that individuals have the right to determine their gender. That is not a scientifically-based proposition, because you cannot determine your gender. Your gender is a given. You may have issues with your gender identity and may deserve everybody's sympathy, but academics must be free to critique this, regard it as nonsense if they wish, and make their case without feeling threatened in their academic freedom. Even if the Minister were to disagree with me on that, one might say that the demand to sign up to social justice commitments of any kind and the coercion to become activists for social justice goals determined by an external body is as much a problem as the potential content of those principles, because higher education bodies in universities are enforced by the Irish Government to push norms and standards set by international NGOs, in effect. In the case I have just given, it is not even evidence-based or required by law. As I said, it is potential destructive for academic freedom. My concerns are, and these are the specific questions. A Chathaoirligh, this is important stuff, and I have sat around too.