Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)

I am fortunate to represent a city that has two thriving third level colleges - the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and NUI Galway. Both colleges cater for more than 20,000 students. As the population of Galway is only approximately 70,000, the student numbers represent an influx during the academic year. The students completely change the city's dynamic, feel and intellectual atmosphere, including the rigour of debates.

The importance, standard and reputation of our education system are extremely important. I have had much interaction with students from across the country and internationally. In my constituency office on Monday, I met a doctoral student from Sri Lanka who is studying here. She is doing her fourth year for a PhD in economics in NUI Galway and has almost completed her studies. In order to maintain our high level of education we must ensure that the required facilities are in place. In that way, students who wish to avail of such courses will be looked after properly. The individual I referred to is having terrible problems with her residency status - her children are staying with her - because her course is running over by a number of months.

In order to maintain that international hub for education, we must offer the correct services to those who come here to contribute to our education system. In addition, they contribute to learning and to the economy generally.

Deputy Finian McGrath and others have said that the importance of the education sector cannot be underestimated. We have seen a welcome spate of job announcements across the country recently, but particularly located in Galway, I am thankful to say. All the CEOs, other key decision-makers and people who work in marketing say that people come to work here not just because of our economic climate or tax status, but also because of the educational qualifications of our graduates whose skills can be applied in the workplace. Ensuring our education system has proper quality standards is important and it will also have practical knock-on consequences for our economy and country.

There is a great niche market in education for this country if we get the quality standards right and develop a reputation internationally as being a place for scholastic excellence. This country could then well become an island of scholars - we might have to drop the words "and saints" - to which people can feel free to come and learn. We could market the country as being one where education is valued, resourced and of high quality.

The Bill is not quite as grand in its aspirations as those I outlined but it is nonetheless a very welcome development amalgamating, as it does, the various bodies, the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, the Higher Education Authority and the quality assurance functions of the universities. The primary function of the Bill is to bring much greater coherence to the quality assurance system. It is a timely initiative and I commend the Minister on his dedication to the legislation.

With the enormous increase in participation rates in further and higher education in recent decades and the continuing demand for the provision of courses in many new and emerging disciplines, it is vital that standards are maintained and that quality is not sacrificed or compromised in any way. This is of great importance to learners who need to navigate their way through a sometimes baffling array of course choice from several providers. Those learners need to be assured that the programme they chose has been properly vetted and validated and that assessment procedures are fair and appropriate for the level of the course they pursue. It is also of huge significance to potential employers who need to be able to trust that qualifications are of an appropriate standard and relevance to particular work areas and have been independently and professionally assessed and validated.

The Bill is also of great importance to all those interested in policies that deal with access, with possibilities for transfer of credits from one course or institution to another and for those interested in promoting and developing the future of lifelong learning routes for all our citizens. Through this Bill it should be possible to enhance the development of clear routes for advancement through the various levels of national qualifications and quality assurance.

The importance of the Bill also transcends national boundaries and is of enormous significance for the internationalisation agenda of education in this country as it will establish a code of practice for those intending to provide courses for international learners. By maintaining a register of those authorised to use the international education mark, it will provide for the protection of learners. For learners educated in this country, it will facilitate the recognition of their awards internationally and, equally importantly, facilitate recognition in this country of appropriate awards gained elsewhere. All this is very necessary if professional mobility is to be facilitated and promoted.

I would like to add my experience of the quality of education I received at third level. I graduated from NUI Galway in 2005 with a law degree, an LL.B. I remember looking back on my time there and thinking how would I rate the quality of the education I received. I would be very much of the view that the teaching by lecturers and tutors was of a very high standard. However, I often felt there was somewhat of a conveyor belt attitude in terms of the number of students that could be fitted into an oversized lecture hall to increase the numbers on courses and the standards of checking to monitor how students were doing, whether there were enough assignments or whether examinations tested if one understood law or was simply capable of regurgitating the cases and statutes one was expected to learn and so on. That was evidenced for me in how the universities across Ireland have been measuring their success to some degree.

I recently received an alumni magazine from NUI Galway outlining some of its key achievement in recent years, all of which seem to focus on items that are more like the achievements of a property developer than an educationist. There was reference to new buildings for business, engineering and X, Y and Z but very little to the courses it has introduced, the critical thinking it advocates and the new ways it has of measuring performance and student learning, which I would have imagined would be much more important to those who are attending it. The building in which one learns is important but what and how one is taught, measured and evaluated seems to me to be much more important.

Academics have warned, and President Michael D. Higgins spoke of this in his remarks when conferred with an honorary doctorate by the National University of Ireland recently, of the commodification, as some people would see it, of the third level sector in particular. We no longer view third level as a place where people can be taught to think, to have their own views with regard to arts, the humanities and so on, and apply those creatively to what would be considered the more concrete subjects such as commerce and so on. In the quality standards they apply, universities must have some way of working in these intangible elements, which are equally as important to an educational environment as the factual and practical outputs such as experiment, project or thesis.

Ireland has much to benefit from having a quality educational reputation. This Bill goes a long way towards amalgamating many of the fragmented structures we have. That will save money, which is important, as good housekeeping is very much required at this time for our economy. It will also provide a means for one central body to have a strategy and a vision Ireland's educational reputation that ensure that we can raise that level over time to become an island of scholars, a place where educational excellence is achieved. It will at the same time maintain and value that which is not so concrete or measurable, that esoteric thinking, difference of opinion, critical analysis and thinking outside the box that is so important for the creative economy which links into the successful and real economy we have.

See this speech in context