Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Minister for Education and Science is engaged in what appears to me to be a vendetta against the universities. These are strong words. To hear the Minister speak one would think the universities are the problem whereas it is vital for the future of the country that the Minister sees them as part of the solution.

The problems of the universities are not of their own making. They arise directly from the fact that they are being starved of resources by the Government. Much of public administration is a battle for control, and education is no different. The Department of Education and Science appears to be composed largely of control freaks who have never been happy with the idea of a university as an autonomous organisation. The Department has refused to recognise that the autonomy of a university is one of its great strengths which should be preserved and nourished with the greatest possible attention. Instead, the Department has repeated that mantra that the taxpayer pays and the taxpayer should call the tune, without realising the implications of that mantra. There has always been a power struggle between the universities and the Department of Education and Science and in recent times this has got worse. It has been attributed to the fact that those within the Department who sought to bring the universities to heel have, at last, found their Minister. I am pleased the Minister is not here himself. I admire him considerably and I was actively involved with him when he introduced the plastic bag tax. However, I am concerned about his apparent hang-up about the universities.

Does the Government really know what is going on? I find it hard to believe that a Government could coolly make a decision to cut back the university sector. This is what the Government is allowing to happen, whether it admits it or not. I do not wish to present this issue in personal terms, but it seems the attitude of the Minister is a large part of the problem. The Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, is a man of great ability and I admire him in many ways. He has strong convictions and does not lack energy. However, he seems to have a blind spot where universities are concerned. Last weekend the Minister made yet another speech which was extremely critical of the universities. He criticised the universities for the fact that their students are unrepresentative of society in general. He said, "The vast majority of funding for the third level sector comes from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers who will never set foot in a university, ever, even once in their lives".

The Minister appears to be holding the universities responsible for the national scandal of educational disadvantage. It is hard not to be taken aback by that. Either the Minister is being disingenuous or he does not know his subject. Every expert in the area and every report on the problem in the last 20 years have hammered home the point that the unrepresentative nature of the university student population has its roots in early childhood and in a disadvantaged background which hampers children from their first day at school. Every expert in the subject has pointed out that no matter how hard universities work at access programmes — I have experience of the hard work they do — they will have only a limited impact on the problem. The real problem must be attacked much earlier, at a stage which is the responsibility of the Minister's Department and not of the universities. If I may say so, the Minister's remark was a cheap shot. It was unworthy of his office and it does a great disservice to the hard work that is being put in by a very large number of people across the entire university sector to address the access problem as best they can.