Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not think it is possible to overstate the impact and importance universities have had on the course of Irish history. We all know the role that was played by Trinity College over the centuries but there was also the establishment of the Catholic University of Ireland in the 19th century. That became the Royal University of Ireland and subsequently the National University of Ireland, which had a huge impact in establishing Irish independence. It educated a huge group of Irish nationalists who were able to articulate the cause of Irish independence and I do not think that independence movement would have happened without us having a national university in the country.

Beyond that, part of the reason Ireland has been so successful as a country since the Second World War is that we have produced huge numbers of intelligent, articulate graduates from our universities. Universities have an extraordinary transformative impact not just on a country but, more specifically, on a region. UCD has had a huge impact on the whole of Dublin in generating growth there. As the Minister of State will know, Limerick has to a large extent been transformed by the university that has grown there over the past 30 years or so. My hope is that the legislation we are discussing today, along with the legislation in respect of technological universities that was enacted more recently, will ensure we can also transform Irish society in a meaningful way, in the same way universities transformed it in the past.

One of the criticisms we can make of universities when we look back at them is that they were very focused on academic achievement and the creation of expertise within the professions or the arts. One of the great benefits of technological universities is that they recognise that there are other aptitudes, skills and excellencies that can be developed. I had the opportunity, along with members of the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, to visit the Munster Technological University before Christmas. It is a wonderful location and one can see the type of people who have been targeted there. We need to ensure that in the future universities and technological universities target not just groups who are very talented academically but also those who are very talented with their hands, mechanically and in other walks of life. Once we can target a broader group of people, we will be able to provide greater opportunities for them.

Education is a liberation. It provides people with liberation and enables them to achieve greater things in their lives. Hopefully people who may have felt that the education system was not for them because their expertise was only in manual skills will now recognise that the expertise they can get through apprenticeships or technological universities is as worthwhile and significant as the other expertise that was achieved previously in respect of academia.

In this Bill we are trying to achieve a balancing act and ensure that universities and third level institutions retain their academic and intellectual independence while at the same time ensuring that, since the State funds them, it has some level of control. The impact of Covid on students was mentioned. It had a devastating impact on their student lives. When a president of one of the universities was before the education committee, he indicated that it was a matter for lecturers to determine when lectures would recommence in person. That is not acceptable in circumstances where the State is funding universities. It is not up to lecturers or individual institutions to decide whether or when they will go back to in-person teaching. That is why it is so important that some outside regulation and control is exerted by the State, since we are giving them that money.

We also need to recognise that we do not want to exert too much control over universities. The reason they succeed and are so influential is because they have that intellectual independence They are able to make decisions about what type of academic expertise they want to study, or what manual expertise in the case of technological universities. We need to retain that independence while at the same time ensuring the State is getting good value for the money we have to put into universities. The funding of third level institutions is another debate to which we will return.

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