Results 221-240 of 7,637 for speaker:Rónán Mullen

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: I am happy to wait, and I mean no discourtesy, but this stuff is important and it has to be gone through. Three or four minutes will do it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: I concluded the introduction.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: We will get through them now. The problem is, you have to be on board with the Athena Swan charter in Ireland if you want to get funding. That means it is a gateway and a control. If it is advancing politically contested principles, that is a problem for academic freedom. The questions to which I would be grateful for an answer, having regard to the briefing the Minister provided - and he...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: I thank the Minister. The charter requires acceptance of principles that impinge on freedom of conscious and religion, for example. One test of academic freedom would be that should an individual refuse to comply with the compulsions entailed in the Athena Swan Ireland charter, that the person in question would not suffer disadvantage. Are individual academics free to reject the charter in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: Yes. The problem with what the Minister is saying, though, while it is fine in general terms and I agree with him that there is plenty of good that Athena SWAN set out to promote and defend, is how these things can get manipulated over time. We are living in a cancel culture kind of environment, where we see people who have views that differ from someone else's being accused of making the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: Yes, I agree. Freedom of expression is not absolute. Academic freedom, though, does and must allow the development of ideas that are or may be considered by certain people to be offensive.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: If we were to close that down, then we would no longer be in a democracy, much less a university.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: That argument is what is called reductio ad absurdum, and it will not reassure academics. I just gave the Minister an example of an objective of Athena SWAN that is not scientifically backed or demonstrable, namely, the idea that a person may determine their gender. I put the question to the Minister again regarding the case of an individual academic who has publicly rejected the Athena...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: This is an academic freedom issue. Undoubtedly, the gender-critical debate, if you like, illustrates the problem. What we see here, as we have seen in the Government's controversial legislation around hate speech, contains definitions that are, at best, politically contested and, at worst, scientifically illiterate. This is an example.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: It is scientifically illiterate to say a person can determine their gender. Now, if Athena SWAN-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: No. I am-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: Yes, but he is not being abused.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: Okay.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: The Cathaoirleach has, but he is getting value for money here now because this is what the Oireachtas is supposed to be doing-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: I thank the Cathaoirleach. I note that I did circulate my intention to raise this issue in advance. That is why we-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: That is a bit harsh. Going back to the Minister, I have given him an example of something that is not demonstrable in fact but nonetheless is used as a part of the political agenda of Athena SWAN. I pointed out to the Minister that in Britain there can be other ways of complying. Athena SWAN should not be the only gateway. I also pointed out to the Minister that in Britain there is-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: Yes, and perhaps a plurality of them.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: I am not going to get into this. There is no way I am going to get into a study of this issue in two minutes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: My point is that I have demonstrated to the Minister that Britain reformed its Athena SWAN charter. I asked the Minister questions that he has not given me specific guarantees on-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills: Current and Future Plans for Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (9 Oct 2024)

Rónán Mullen: -----including my questions concerning an individual's public rejection of the AS Ireland charter. Even just that would make him or her ineligible for promotion within a department or school that has adopted the charter. If people may have gender-critical views around people's sense of self, can the Minister give staff at third level colleges a guarantee that expressions of academic freedom...