Results 161-180 of 7,581 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 not rushing the Cathaoirleach. I will never rush him.

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 short-sighted.

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 is pulling my leg.

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 want to put my own satisfaction and delight at the announcement of the new veterinary college places on the record, particularly in Mountbellew, where I went to school myself. It is a tidy and thriving town. It will be good for those students, and they will be good for Mountbellew. We might meet some of those students in training when the vets come out in the middle of the night to look...

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-----