Brendan Ryan (Labour)

In the place where I occasionally work, if somebody claims to have a PhD, we check it out properly. We are able to distinguish between real PhDs and pretend PhDs. I have worked there for almost 30 years and we have never recruited somebody who did not have a real PhD. We manage that fairly well, as does every other institute of technology and university in the country.

In the Cork Institute of Technology, or in any other institute of technology, we would not put somebody in charge of research who did not have a proper PhD, yet we have put somebody in charge of research in a Department who has apparently bought a PhD. It is a gross insult to all the people who are trying to build up the research profile of this country and it is another cop-out.

The last insult we in the education sector had to suffer was that a person who was deemed unfit to run the Department of Health and Children was put in charge of higher education. I find all of this rather peculiar. It is a classic case of Ireland, the country where nobody is accountable for anything.

I second Senator Brian Hayes's amendment to the Order of Business. When I was involved in independent politics in the 1980s, one could not go to a meeting at which there were four people which had anything to do with Northern Ireland without at least as many members of the Special Branch being there to watch who was there and to make sure nothing happened. I have not been able to get any explanation as to why the resources that were correctly available then to deal with subversive organisations are not available now to deal with criminal gangs of whom people are at this stage genuinely terrified.