Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. I do not welcome the Bill because I believe the Minister is better than this Bill would have him appear. It has the look of a Bill that has been hanging around Marlborough Street for a long time. There is a recent tradition of hostility to university autonomy from Marlborough Street and I regret that.

On 17 September last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that international comparisons suggest Ireland's universities are relatively efficient and highly regarded. A massive level abuse was found on the administrator side, as Members will know. I refer to bonus payments, for example. The proportion of pay received by academics in universities has dropped to 42% in recent years. It used to be more than double that. Layers of bureaucracy have been created and there are vice presidents, assistant registrars and staff with the word "strategic" in their titles. They escape scot free because, as is perceived in the universities, they are part of the Marlborough Street tentacles getting into universities.

The part to which the 42% statistic pertains has the highest international ratings. That would have become apparent had there been consultation on the Bill. I am a member of governing body and noted there was no consultation therewith. We would have been able to tell the Minister that our graduates are up to the standard in Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. The US and UK authorities are not imposing a system such as ours on our competitors.

It is very much to be regretted that the Minister stated the universities must implement the authority's directions following a review. We have always been in favour of autonomous universities. We accept and respect diversity and different views. Universities are not a branch of the Civil Service. The latter's attempts to take them over in recent years, by rapidly increasing the amount of bureaucracy and devoting increasingly fewer funds to what goes on in the lecture hall, are a pity. I regret to see this continuing.

The Hunt report was mentioned. There was not a single lecturer or teacher on the Hunt committee. The same applied to the innovation committee and the knowledge economy report. Those of us who do the work in universities would very much like to make the case that we provide degrees at much less cost of parity with Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. Our graduates go straight to these places to do graduate work. They do not need this type of certification as they have it already at a much higher level. Employers tell us the same thing; Irish graduates are employable here and abroad.

I do not know what problem the Bill addresses except the political one of amalgamating bodies. One will see in the Bill that nobody will lose a post, so I do not know from where the savings are to come. A section in the Bill states all staff of the existing quangos will join the new one. How does the Bill address Ireland's problems? When the country was falling apart because of, as members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform have seen, appalling banks which did not know what they were doing and probably did not care much either and an appalling Central Bank regulating what was going on, the universities were still performing.

Part of the Chopra and IMF arrangements must be to reduce bureaucracy and increase front line activity. We need to increase the 42% statistic and stop unnecessary quangos and bureaucracies. This is an unnecessary quango and unnecessary bureaucracy with regard to what it intends to do in the universities. We must get away from not asking the people in the classrooms. Surveys can be taken on who is a good lecturer and who is not. If somebody does not turn up, 400 people will be in the front square. It must be the most transparent part of the system. This is unlike how the rest of a university's affairs is organised as it is extremely difficult to find out what is going on and, I would venture to say, also unlike the Department of Education and Skills.

I do not know what problem the Minister is addressing. I do not know what legal minefields we are entering because some of the institutions have charters. It took a private Act of the Legislature to remove seven senior people from the TCD board. This has been a disaster because it removed from the board seven experienced people and tilted the balance in favour of managerialism. Universities are collegiate institutions, not managerial ones. The Bill is managerialism from beginning to end.

I do not know why section 28 exists. I do not like to read on page 15 that the Minister will appoint a chief executive and on page 62 that the Minister will appoint all the members of the authority. Representational bodies might have something to contribute outside the ever-decreasing circle which Marlborough Street chooses to consult when it wants to know what is going on in Irish education. On page 17 it is stated the chief executive will not be required to account for court cases. Bizarre court cases have been taken in Irish education and when the taxpayer loses a bundle of money in the Supreme Court, which happens, I would like to ask the chief executives what they thought they were doing by running the court cases. It seems to be a very strange section.

Also on page 17, it is stated the chief executive will not be allowed to comment on the merits or objectives of any policy of the Government or Minister. This is what higher education is. Owen Skeffington came to the Seanad when it was policy to wallop children and for years and years he argued against it. Eventually, the Government changed its mind. If this is destroyed, Irish universities will be turned into the type of eastern European ones which collapsed and contributed nothing. This has totalitarian elements.

With regard to section 9 on the functions of the authority, the Bill reinvents what is already being done to the highest international level. Examples have occurred of misguided interference such as restructuring, which cost €6 million through the strategic innovation fund and which has never been properly appraised. A survey was conducted after it was done in which one lecturer stated it freed up more time for research and 180 stated it did not. However, restructuring continued because somebody in an office somewhere, who had not been near a lecture hall for many years, decided it was a good idea.

As the Comptroller and Auditor Chairman stated, we should examine the administration side of universities. We should also examine the administration of the HEA, other quangos and the higher education sector of the Department, because an bord snip nua found a large amount of money there. If we have only seven universities and are really interested in getting the public finances under control, why not have one person writing seven cheques in five minutes and then getting on with other work? An immense amount of bureaucracy is diverting badly needed money away from front line activities in education.

With regard to international accreditation, under the Bologna process the Trinity final year was reduced from five to four courses. We were better than the international standard, which is why we are up there with Harvard and Yale. When it came to what courses had to go, it was either one's dissertation or the general paper. The purpose of the general paper is that one should not know only about course A, B and C; one should know economics or genetics in general. Mindless internationalisation and standardisation reduce what we have to offer international markets.

I mentioned that under the Bill one will not be able to criticise the Government or Minister or the objectives of policy. This is extremely strange. The compulsion on a working sector which has an international reputation to engage in this at a time when we are cutting so many vital public expenditures such as special needs assistants seems strange. We should be cutting out unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and not introducing more.

I shall certainly table amendments but I regret the tone of the Bill, its content and its failure to recognise that developing education in Ireland would be a way out of the current difficulties. Unless we are to have massive tax increases, we have to remove the administrative layers inside and outside universities. This is a strange Bill which contradicts many of the very interesting and innovative statements the Minister has made since bringing such energy to the portfolio.