Sean Barrett (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State most sincerely for his response, which is good to hear. As he will be aware, the Comptroller and Auditor General examined all these matters in his resource management study. What he found was that the funds provided for this purpose were top-sliced from the teaching budget. Top-slicing is a word I hate and is regarded in golf as ending up in a bunker. Much of the quality assurance work in universities ended up in a bunker because the Comptroller and Auditor General found that bureaucracy in universities had vastly increased. One has people watching over those who are giving the lectures the Minister of State indicated he appreciates this. I applaud the finding that standards were adhered to but money was being diverted into layers of bureaucracy.

Interestingly, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report noted that the "quality office" supplies information to "important strategic enablers" and "has provided better management information for senior institutional management, and better feedback mechanisms for institutional governance." Moreover, it notes that "significant restructuring" has taken place "in terms of academic structures and in terms of administration and management structures." This is all managerialism. The important issues are whether lecturer X knows enough, has reached the top international standards and communicates this to students. We have a structure in the universities that measures things that do not count, namely, improving management structures and so forth. A university is not a managerial institution but a collegial institution based on the Irish tradition of the muinteoir who must communicate with students. The layers of bureaucracy already associated with this process are taking money away from where it is needed in education. This is confirmed by my reading of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report.

While I appreciate the clarification provided by the Minister of State, I wonder whether the exercise is worthwhile. As he noted, the academic side is not part of the process. As to the institutional side, why can we not take a lecturer's salary, divide it by a number of students and add a certain amount for overheads. In 2010, when the Comptroller and Auditor General examined how the accounts were prepared to qualify for quality assurance standards, the most recent accounts he could find for the sector were from 2002. The legislation will impose an additional burden on the educational budget and take resources from the classroom and lecture hall to perform an administrative exercise which could be done in a much more simple manner. It may not deliver any return and will divert resources. Those are my concerns.

While I welcome amendment No. 39, there is serious concern that quality assurance, as practised in Irish universities, does not measure anything important and results in the waste of large amounts of money on the performance of administrative and managerial tasks that could be done in a much more simple manner. A university is not a managerial system. One needs good lecturing and one must attract good students. One also needs an international reputation and one must keep down costs. The new quango established in the universities has cost money and created problems, as the Comptroller and Auditor General has found. What are we measuring and why are we spending money on it when we need this money in the education system, particularly at this time of difficulty with the public finances? This process is entirely bureaucrat driven and will not improve the standard of poetry, engineering, music or any of the other subjects taught in Irish universities. On the contrary, it will make life more difficult for those who are trying to teach in the face of such administrative burdens, time wasting and interference.