Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Táim sásta go bhfuil dul chun cinn ó thaobh na scéime faoi leith i mí Iúil. Chaith mé a lán ama sa Dáil seo ag cur brú ar an Aire agus ar an Rialtas chun rud a dhéanamh. Táim ag tnúth leis an díospóireacht an tseachtain seo chugainn. I am looking forward to next week's debate on the July provision on special needs. I will not spend any more time on it, but certainly it was utterly neglected. I thank the Minister for the progress in that regard. Special schools, just like nursing homes and residential centres, should have been at the top of the agenda for any committee with a broad range of experience from day one.

I wish to zone in on universities. They have been mentioned today in many guises. I refer to two articles I read recently that set me thinking all over again. One was by Diarmaid Ferriter, the professor of history at UCD, and the other was by Deirdre Heenan, the professor of applied social policy at Ulster University. Diarmaid Ferriter wrote: " How old-fashioned it appears now to strive for a university that is a pleasant place in which to work and study, with pride in its self-made identity and producing independent thinkers who can conserve, create and transmit knowledge." I would add "to transmit a love of learning." Deirdre Heenan wrote: "Irish and British universities have to ask themselves whether they are educational institutions focused on the public good, or primarily businesses focused on revenue raising".

We are talking about learning lessons from Covid and not going back but I am very concerned about how the universities are making it normal for students to learn from home on computers. It is absolutely abnormal and unacceptable, but it is something we have to do at the moment. For example, the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology in Galway has received instructions that this will go on for the year. I am not sure why that type of teaching should go on for a year. The same also applies to the university. I would have expected it to last for a month or three months with a built-in review.

Any decision like that should also be based on analysis of student needs. I took the precaution of reading the executive summary and I glanced at the rest of the report from the Higher Education Authority, HEA, which draws our attention to the huge drop-out rates at third level. It is complex and based on complex factors, but it is a big issue. The HEA draws our attention to the fact this is a big issue, certainly in the context of gender - it is more boys than girls - where one comes from and how many points one starts with. It is mostly related to the failure to prepare those students going to third level and the failure to give help.

I am looking at this report and I am extremely concerned. The Minister will probably not have a chance to answer me, but I want to use my time to raise this because I have not heard it raised. Third level institutions should be places of learning. I have read the letter from various scientists. The number has increased to 1,500 compared with 1,000 in 2015 when they made their concerns known. I am worried, however, that the sciences are going in one trajectory while the arts and humanities subjects are going in another, when both of those should be together. If we learned anything from NPHET, we learned that the consensus mentality is not right. We also learned that from the banking crisis. We do not need a consensus mentality. We need questioning. If we had had questioning on NPHET, we would have done something regarding nursing homes from day one.

It is similar with universities. There is a cry that they are underfunded, and of course they are. I have heard the announcements and I have seen that funding is now 40% less than in 2008. This is the time to look at how we fund universities, and it should certainly not be through student loans. We fund universities because they are essential to democracy and learning. They are essential to a questioning and a healthy society, and we must make funding conditional on dealing with the huge drop-out rate and the lack of inclusiveness. I pay tribute to the National University of Ireland Galway, NUIG. It has done its best with inclusiveness, but it has a long way to go.

In addition, we have a statement from the Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG regarding what it sees as the misuse of PhD and other postgraduate students in Galway because they are being asked to give so many hours teaching per year, as part of their postgraduate studies, for very little pay.

We have serious issues at third level besides the absence of funding. We have a crisis regarding what a university should be and what we should value. We should never value the powerful voices who have access to Government over the other voices who do not. If we have learned anything, we have learned that we need a whole range of voices at our third level institutions and at various committees.

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