Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

In general, the Labour Party welcomes this Bill. Institutes of technology, including the Dublin Institute of Technology of which I was a member of staff for a long time, have played an important role in contributing to access to third level education, to the production of very high calibre graduates and, increasingly, to research and the various Government-sponsored initiatives in scientific research and development. The Minister should clarify matters relating to the latter point. I believe all the parties in the House agree that such scientific initiatives are vital for our continued economic success and development.

I welcome the Bill but the Minister should clarify a number of areas. Deputy Power and others noted that, in many ways, the motivation for this Bill arose from an OECD report produced a few years ago and presented to the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey. The former Minister was an enthusiastic advocate of the report until Fianna Fáil examined some of its recommendations. One recommendation called for the return of third level fees through appropriate mechanisms. While the former Minister conducted a campaign in the media to bring back third level fees, the Taoiseach realised this was not necessarily the best course of action and Fianna Fáil backed away from it. It is important to remember that this recommendation was a key element of the OECD review of third level education in Ireland.

Another aspect of the report to which I object was the insinuation that institutes of technology should concentrate on teaching and producing undergraduates and granting diplomas and certificates. The report was, therefore, hostile to the idea of institutes of technology conducting active and expanding programmes of research and did not favour the expansion of degree awarding powers to institutes of technology. This was a mistake. The Minister must clarify her approach to this vital issue in the context of this Bill.

My colleague, Deputy Carey, who is present, was involved in VEC matters for a long time. The examinations and evaluations carried out around the country by independent bodies, including distinguished institutions of engineers, for example, have repeatedly rated the courses provided by institutes of technology such as DIT and the Cork Institute of Technology higher than those provided by universities, particularly in the engineering fields. This is partly due to the approach to innovative research in the third and fourth years of many of their engineering degrees. It is important that we acknowledge this strength.

Will the Minister of State clarify whether the institutes of technology will be encouraged to compete for research funding through the SFI and PRTLI initiatives under this Bill? They have done so successfully to date. It is one of the most positive aspects of the development of the colleges and should be expanded on. As the Minister of State is aware, this is critical to retaining and attracting high calibre staff. Currently, people at PhD level are applying to become assistant lecturers because it would allow them to begin their academic careers in secure employment. They are attracted to those institutes of technology where there is a significant research base through which they can not only become actively involved in teaching, but continue their academic research studies.

One should bear in mind that, particularly in the greater Dublin area, these factors have often been allied to a fruitful interaction with high-tech industries such as Intel and Hewlett Packard, which have welcomed the active research by institutes of technology that complement the type of work they carry out in Ireland. A momentum and a synthesis have been created whereby various institutes of technology, particularly DIT and those in Tallaght, Blanchardstown, Cork, Waterford, Sligo, Tralee in terms of the food industry, and a number of other institutes have built up active linkages with industry. This involves supplying appropriate graduates and encouraging high calibre staff to compete for research programme funding. It is important that the Minister for Education and Science clarifies her commitment to the expansion of this positive feature of third level development.

In this context, a section of the Bill clarifying and expanding on legislation in respect of DIT bothers me. Part 3 provides for appropriate amendments to that legislation and confirms DIT's absolute higher degree-awarding powers. In her speech, the Minister said that the institutes of technology will continue to have degree-awarding powers through the appropriate qualifications authority, as it were, but should we not create a track for particularly outstanding institutes? Cork and Waterford have the lead in this regard and should be considered for the same powers.

Deputy Nolan said that Government policy and the OECD report commend the binary system. The Deputy told the House that everyone believes in that system, but I favour a long-term move towards a unified system. For this reason, I welcome the inclusion of the institutes of technology in the HEA framework. However, I do not want the Minister to solidify an approach that views universities as the premier league and institutes as something else. There are different paths to development and different ladders in education but the objectives should be clear. We want the widest level of opportunity and we want to keep encouraging the institutes to develop. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify her policy approach in respect of these issues.

When professional bodies evaluate the key skills of engineering and science, computers, business and entrepreneurship taught at DIT and other institutes, skills that are critical to our economy and jobs base, they often rank the institutes and various courses above comparative university courses. The institutes and DIT can proudly go into the HEA framework with this achievement. They should be acknowledged for it instead of going in as the little brother to a big brother, that is, the universities. This is a critical factor in the Minister's philosophical approach to the area.

The initial micro-management of the institutes and, to a lesser extent, DIT by the VECs on behalf of the Department of Education and Science and lately by the Department itself means that the basis for calculating the cost ratios and Government payments has been different to the basis for universities. One must bear in mind that many universities were built and carry capacity for large class sizes in the fields of arts, law and commerce in particular. By and large, institutes of technology have not had that capacity.

If crude bases of measurement are used, this could mean that the institutes of technology under the HEA umbrella could find certain of their courses are disadvantaged from an economic point of view. It implies the Minister is required to specify policy to make transitional arrangements available as the institutes enter the HEA so that they are not disadvantaged in moving from one system to another. I expect the HEA will be aware of this aspect and will do its best to support the institutes. There are very specialist courses relating, for instance, to paramedical services, in the Dublin Institute of Technology, the nature of which are such that the number of students who can enrol is much smaller than would be the case at university level. The Minister must clarify matters in that regard.

I will discuss the origin of the institutes of technology and address an issue that arose during a recent political discussion programme on which I was a guest, "Tonight with Vincent Browne". It has become politically correct and fashionable, particularly following the views expressed by the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, and the publication of the OECD report, to damn as politically incorrect the abolition of third-level undergraduate fees. I was one of those in the Labour Party who championed the introduction of free undergraduate third-level education.

People have forgotten the history of the institutes of technology. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, various Governments wisely decided to invest a significant proportion of Ireland's European Social Fund in education. As a consequence, students on various courses at the institutes of technology were heavily funded by ESF grants. Not only did they receive grants, they also received a weekly stipend. Furthermore, the bureaucracy involved was extraordinarily simple in comparison to that involved in obtaining a third-level grant from the Department of Education and Science. It was very simple to qualify for an ESF grant. A student simply obtained a place on a course, signed up and attended classes, had his or her attendance certified and the money was issued.

For students from non-farming backgrounds, this was incredibly simple, direct and popular, compared to third-level education grants, which were, and still are, out of the range of most students whose parents are in paid employment. The son or daughter of a CIE bus driver, for example, is unlikely, even today, to qualify for a third-level grant, particularly if the parent has some overtime earnings. On the other hand, a student whose parents have a substantial holding of farmland is quite likely to qualify for a third-level grant. In the Fingal area of west and north Dublin, most third-level grants are issued to people with agricultural holdings or to self-employed people such as hauliers. The children of people who are employed, however, do not qualify for grants because the income threshold is too low.

The ESF grant system brought tens of thousands of students into the Irish third-level education system. It was the magic bullet that pushed our participation rates at third-level up from among the lowest in Europe to among the highest. When the Labour Party decided to abolish undergraduate tuition fees, it was against the background of the fact that ESF grants would be phased out because that stream of EU funding was coming to a natural end. At the same time, tax covenant schemes allowed wealthy people to write-off the college fees they paid, while the children of parents in paid employment, such as a CIE bus driver or a shop steward in a factory in Killarney, could not qualify for a third-level grant. When the Labour Party and the rainbow coalition Government made the historic decision to abolish undergraduate fees, they did so in the knowledge that it would contribute to the growth of the institutes of technology, particularly those outside Dublin and would open the door to third-level education to many thousands of additional students.

While the figures for participation have been very slow in coming through they are, nonetheless, improving. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, graciously acknowledged that yesterday when she pointed out that our participation rate at third-level has increased from 40% to 55%. That is as it should be, if we want to continue to be champions in terms of educational participation and our development as a knowledge-based economy.

I do not know who the author of the aforementioned OECD report was but whoever suggested that we reverse the abolition of undergraduate third-level fees had a very narrow view point. It is the same view point as that of the heads of the universities, who have funding issues with the Government and who also found that the fees mechanism gave them far greater control over their budgets than the current cheque in the post, as it were, from the Department of Education and Science, via the Higher Education Authority.

I wished to put these points on the record because criticism of the abolition of third level fees has become incredibly politically correct, particularly among the media and the chattering classes of south County Dublin. The latter have a surplus of private schools to which to send their children and are spending their money on second-level rather than third-level education. The rest of us live in the rest of the country. We do not live in Dublin 4 or south County Dublin. We live in places where those options are not available. In places like Galway and most of Connacht, for example, there are local schools which every child attends and that is all that is available.

I hope this Bill will mark an era of greater freedom for the institutes of technology and of growing equality with the universities. If institutes such as the Dublin Institute of Technology, my former college, or the Waterford Institute of Technology want to develop to university level and show they can meet the standards, I will cheer for them all the way.

See this speech in context