Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am happy that consensus reigns, although I suspect that the next speaker on this side may make some effort to break the consensus. I am a member of the Teachers Union of Ireland, which was prominently reported as having taken exception to the agreement. My colleagues and I take exception to the agreement in the main because it implies certain things were not being done. Paragraph 31.42 of the agreement states, "All staff employed in the [academic sector of the institutes of technology] agree to ongoing co-operation with, and adoption of, new and more flexible work patterns arising from the broadening of roles and responsibilities of third-level educational institutions". Nobody I know has a clue what that means.

My current contract states I must be available to teach between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, and that night work, between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., is a normal part of my duties. My colleagues and I want to know what else is wanted from us in terms of flexibility. The issue arises because academic staff feel there is an attempt to put an end to holidays and related matters without negotiation and proper consultation. If it is intended to end holidays, let us talk about this. What more flexibility is wanted?

One of my friends was involved with the negotiations on one of these issues. He sat with officials of the Department of Education and Science, who were supported by an official from the Department of Finance. When proposals such as this one arose, my colleague made suggestions and asked what the officials wanted. The official from the Department of Finance simply replied: "More." Looking for more is not the spirit of partnership.

With regard to quality assurance, in the past 12 months the course on which I teach has been subject to two different accreditations, one by Engineers Ireland and the other by the Institution of Chemical Engineers. We did not choose the accreditors; the institutions did so. In both cases, we had to defend the course through our exam papers, through the output of our students, through private debates between the evaluators and our students and through a succession of measures. No civil servant in the Department of Finance was ever subjected to such a vigorous external accreditation of his or her job.

My colleagues in the institutes of technology are fed up with this. Four engineering degrees are available in Cork Institute of Technology, each of which got five-year accreditation from Engineers Ireland. Down the road is another institution, which proclaims itself the university of the year although two of its degrees were refused similar accreditation. However, we are told we are not flexible enough and not responsive enough to new needs, despite this being a sector which thought itself up as it went along and which reinvented itself perhaps four times.

If we could believe there was goodwill behind these proposals, I and my colleagues in the TUI would have no problem with them. However, they only reflect the perception of inadequate management and not the reality on the ground. My institute of technology has approximately 10,000 students and provides a huge suite of courses. In the past three months its staff has restructured, on paper at least, every course to meet a commitment to semesterisation and modularisation. It was an enormous bureaucratic collective task which was completed by the end of May. Then, we find the partnership document states we must commit ourselves to flexible modes of delivery and refers to semesterisation and modularisation.

The Government should not underestimate the depth and intensity of the anger of staff in the institutes of technology at what they believe is a determined effort to leave them with no negotiating position on any issue. Given that somebody told the officials there was inflexibility in some part of the public sector, they included a demand for a carte blanche approach. Whether this is agreed, if an attempt is made to implement what my colleagues believe is behind this approach, there will be large scale industrial unrest. It does not matter how many fine words are in the agreement or what is the position of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Since their foundation, there has been imagination, creativity, flexibility and innovation in the institutes of technology on a scale that the universities did not discover until ten years ago. The suggestion in the document that this is lacking is wrong. In my teaching, I would use modern modes of delivery, such as computers, Powerpoint and so on, expect the Department of Education and Science refuses to fund my institute to provide that equipment in every classroom. If it does provide the equipment, it gets stolen because the Department refuses to allow my institute to employ night security staff. I was trying to use e-mail and the worldwide web before the Departments of Education and Science and Finance knew what they were.

The inhibition with regard to the use of modern technology in the institutes of technology is a resource inhibition. It results from a failure to provide sufficient resources, training and flexibility in the way the systems runs. The academic staff, having read this document and the original Government proposals, which were even worse than this final agreement, are dissatisfied. The TUI in Cork Institute of Technology is and has been extremely flexible. My colleagues range from average lecturers to members of the national executive of the TUI. If this aspect of the agreement is in any way as they have interpreted it, there will be large-scale and vigorous industrial unrest in a sector that has been identified as one of the areas that has contributed enormously to our industrial and economic success. I say that not as a threat, but as a fact.

Every external body says the regional technical colleges, RTCs, were an imaginative creation by a Fianna Fáil Minister for Education, Dr. Patrick Hillary, which have been highly successful. It is implied in the document that the RTCs are no longer fulfilling their purpose. This is profoundly resented and if it is carried through in the spirit I interpreted, it will cause serious industrial unrest.