Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for participating in this debate. The report is staid, unimaginative and uninspiring and the Minister should ignore most of it. I will guide her in my contribution through those aspects of it about which she needs to think. I am sure she can produce something a great deal better on her own than the contents of the report.

I was delighted that Senator Fitzgerald, the Fianna Fáil spokesman on education in the House, referred to the extraordinary manner in which the report disregarded the arts and humanities. It worried me to note a point in the Minister's speech which implied she bought into the report's perspective in this regard. She referred to the continuing need to distinguish between the need to develop research leaders and labour market needs. While I have no objection to that approach, if it is the whole story, we will produce a generation of robotic Gradgrinds who do not know how to run a country. Hand in hand with that approach, we want a policy which seeks to create a generation of innovative, creative, strategic and tactical young people with leadership qualities. The great flaw in the report is its failure to consider this model.

The report is political as evidenced by the fact that its most significant point was that our investment in education as a percentage of gross domestic product is not only reducing but less than that of the other OECD countries listed. I hope it is a matter the Minister will bring to the Cabinet's attention. The statistic represents perhaps the only value the Minister can derive from the report as she can flag the fact to Government. We cannot do the business with such a low level of investment in education. The Minister touched on some of the important points made in the report which we should take on board. It described the institutes of technology as like a curate's egg in that they are good in parts. While the report is patronising to the institutes on one level, it is supportive of them on another. We should take note of what is positive.

As the Minister said, the report suggests it is crucial to create one tertiary education authority to deal with universities and institutes of technology, which the report describes as institutes of tertiary education. While the terminology is unimportant, we should support the recommendation and I call on the Minister to do so. I acknowledge that there is a process to go through first, but the Minister was overly coy in her speech. I would like to hear her say that is her view. If it is her view, she by ministerial order or the Government by statutory instrument can create circumstances in which institutes of technology can come under the HEA. That is my understanding of the legislation, although I see the Minister shaking her head.

While most of the report's recommendations on the structures and governance of colleges would require legislative changes to implement, I thought from my reading of existing legislation that it would be possible by order to make changes on funding arrangements. It is a matter I would like teased out. While I would not expect her to provide it today, perhaps the Minister can make available legal advice in her own time. I would like to know the ins and outs of the matter.

Whether one's idea of the university accords with the medieval thinking of Peter Abelard, that of Cardinal Newman 100 years ago or modern thinking, autonomy within a third level institution is crucial. It is nonsensical, as the report points out, that an institute of technology must obtain the permission of the Department of Education and Science to establish a degree course. The practice has never been sustainable, but as a gap needed to be filled 20 years ago, we had to put structures in place quickly. As she is an educationalist herself, there are certain matters on which the Minister does not require a great deal of advice. This is one of them. Everyone here knows the practice is wrong. I suspect that in providing institutes of technology with autonomy and bringing them into the same funding structures as universities, the Minister's greatest problem will not come from her Department but from Merrion Street. We should take on the officials from the Department of Finance and bring them here to defend their point of view. From an educational perspective, what they are trying to do in this area is unacceptable.

The seven universities and the 13 institutes of technology should be brought under the same authority. Clearance systems would have to be established in the structure whereby any course it was intended to establish achieved a certain level of quality. That has always been the case in universities and it should continue. The report states that one of the difficulties institutes of technology face is the lack of a quality assurance scheme. However, it also states that we should not rush ahead while we are waiting for the Bologna declaration to be implemented all over Europe. It will be some time after the Minister has been re-elected for another term before the Bologna declaration comes into effect around Europe. We will still be arguing about whether a degree takes three or four years to complete and whether four years in an institute of technology is equivalent to three years in a university. We should ignore the process. If we need quality assurance, we should have it. If we had introduced it previously, one of the most serious rows in third level education in recent times would have been avoided.

The point brings me neatly to another of the great failures of the report. While it referred to the knowledge society, of which Senator Fitzgerald spoke also, lifelong learning, globalisation and the international context, it made no reference to e-learning. Does it contain anything about e-universities or the selling overseas of courses based in Dublin? Who are its authors? They must constitute the most unimaginative group to manage to write a full report on internationalism in third level education without dealing with e-learning and e-knowledge. It is astonishing that this has been produced by the OECD. The authors should be kicked out of its base in Paris to see something of the world. They seem to be retired people, although I do not want them to take this personally. However, they were simply having a couple of days' enjoyment in Ireland. I certainly did not see any fresh thinking or new learning. They avoided the political issues, because the OECD is so political. They point out that we have a huge gap in investment, but do they say we should put more State investment into the system? No. They talk about the need to improve private income stream and fund-raising. They make a valid point that universities, third level institutions and institutes of technology which manage to attract research funding, fund-raising and donations should not be penalised in any way in terms of what they get from the State. In fact, if anything, they should be rewarded. I would go along with that assertion.

These people are politicians and therefore avoided any embarrassment to their Government by going back to whoever might be in Paris next year at the next meeting of the OECD to ask, "Who are those people to tell us we should put more money into education?" However, we should say it, the Minister should say it and we should do it. If the Government decides it will not do so, at least we will know where the difficulties lie.

If we had quality assurance in education, together with e-learning proposals and plans, we would not have had a row last year with regard to Hibernia College and the colleges of education. The colleges of education are good, e-learning is great and e-qualifications are a brilliant idea. Before there was any row, we all thought it was great. Now we have a situation whereby somebody has started to provide e-learning and there is significant opposition. Is that right or wrong? There is only one way we will know, which is through quality assurance. We got into a debate that opposed e-learning. My instinct is to support e-learning until somebody tells me why I should not do so, whereas most of the educational establishment oppose it until somebody tells them why they should support it.

We need to keep moving on the issue, and the only way to do so is through quality assurance. If quality assurance was in place and somebody came to the Minister or her predecessor and said they had compared e-learning and the traditional way and found no difference between them in that one was as good as the other, then we should carry on. If they said that one was better than the other, then we would have a problem. Which is better? Which comes up best in a comparison? People must allow the decision to be made. The issue of e-learning is another gap in the OECD report and the matter should be raised and returned to.

How dare these people tell us about our regional programme. I refuse to discuss this simply on the basis that it is an educational document from the OECD. I will tell the Minister one thing and she can come back to me on the matter: if we implement what the report is suggesting there will be no university north of a line from Dublin to Galway. That is what it means. The BMW region, with the exception of Galway in the south west of the region, will not be entitled to seek a university, never mind places such as Waterford which has made a substantial case. It is anti-competitive, to use the OECD's type of language, to state that institutes of technology cannot award degrees. It is anti-competitive for the report to patronisingly state the institutes of technology are not good enough to offer doctorates. It is also quite patronising to state we should have doctorates in universities and perhaps a sidekick supervisor also based in the institutes of technology. I see no reason for this. If an institute of technology focuses strongly on an important aspect of education, learning or technology and wants to bring that to doctoral standard, it should do so. We should not place artificial restrictions on where a university might be situated. That is not what it is about, neither does it fit into our spatial or gateway strategy or review of the BMW region. It is unacceptable that the BMW region would not be entitled to develop university education in its own way.

The idea of waiting for the Bologna process to come into play will only slow us down, and the Minister should ignore that idea. The issue of overseas and international students also ties into what I said regarding the importance of e-learning. However, it does not just relate to e-learning. In terms of getting more people into third level education, the report ignores whole groups in society. What is our strategy? Let us take an example of a woman in her home in north-west Mayo who would like to go to university and get a degree but has domestic responsibilities. She is bright enough to easily get through a degree and make a contribution to Ireland's economy and social capital. E-learning is the way for her to achieve this. Harvard can do it, so why can we not do likewise?

Why can we not sell Irish literature programme degrees based in Dublin to Boston? They do so in the United States. Canada sells such degrees into Chicago. What we are doing here is restrictive. These people are not opening their eyes. They are probably restricted by national boundaries. They are absolutely right in their criticism that we have not sufficiently opened up to international students. However, one codicil to that criticism is that we have had difficulties with the Royal College of Surgeons in that some would say it is allowing in too many international students to the detriment of Irish students who should take priority. There is no doubt about that. However, that goes back to the fundamental point that we do not invest enough in tertiary education. My understanding is that the Royal College of Surgeons does not have enough money to extend places and it is very much reliant on the income stream it gets from international students. That is a catch-22 situation and we cannot allow it to happen. The Minister must hammer the Cabinet table and say it cannot be done. If we want more GPs and consultants, this is a problem which we must unblock. That is where we go.

E-learning would similarly bring mature students into the system. If somebody is working in a job in the BMW region, far from a university, and he or she wants a university qualification, he or she should be able to do so through e-learning.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach is getting edgy.