Sean Barrett (Independent)

No. I thank the Minister of State for his clarification. The key issue is that an external examiner from outside the country who is qualified in engineering, economics or whatever in the relevant subject already assesses university courses. It is the fault of the universities that they do not stress to the Minister and his officials that they already undergo external examinations. The external examiner is rarely mentioned in such discussions and the more is the pity. If a course is not good, it will not attract students, its graduates will not be employed or be accepted in the best graduate schools worldwide and the research published by departmental staff will not secure widespread international recognition.

While I appreciate the context in which this intervention is being made, I would have abolished the Irish Universities Quality Body. Trinity College Dublin has a reputation in China and has a sizeable number of graduates in Hong Kong who did not need a QQAI rosette stuck on the end of their degree because the quality of their qualification was known. While it is not attributable to the Minister of State or the Minister, an immense layer of bureaucracy grew up in the past decade which took more and more money out of education. I would be more radical and return responsibility for quality to those who are best qualified and have the best international contacts. A mega-quango of the size suggested would be a cost base. As someone who has been at the coalface lecturing to students, there has been no valued added from the exercise to date and I see little value in transferring this exercise to a body which has such a wide range of responsibilities. The IUQB staff should be reassigned to other duties and universities made responsible for the work done by these staff. The Comptroller and Auditor General pointed out to the Public Accounts Committee that those with the administrative and managerial titles, which are unnecessary in a university, were the ones who went on to earn more than €200,000. That was three times as much as those doing the work got and those who do the work are delighted to do it and have the contact with the students to meet all the standards the Minister sees as desirable. To have some kind of nebulous checking of irrelevant detail by people costing three times as much per head seems pointless. Quangos also develop regulatory creep so they will be back for more as they attempt to extend their powers, which is what happened in this case. In the case of the universities, the exercise was not necessary and I thank the Minister for his reassurance in that regard.

This Bill has been around for years. It predates this Minister and probably two or three others given the rate of turnover that existed. It should have been re-evaluated at even the most basic level. I cannot see the need for it and in that context I am tabling these amendments. I am glad I am ad idem with the Minister and I hope public policy in general would recognise that having people supervising people who are already doing an international job and giving out a national qualification is a redundant exercise. The universities must operate internationally or they will sink. Setting up a national bureaucracy to supervise international institutions will not work. It has not worked to date, that is my complaint. The IUQB has cost too much. It was a silly exercise to begin with and it has not accomplished anything because the quality of an English department, for instance, in an Irish university depends on those in it and their international reputation. Someone from the IUQB lurking in the background pretending to understand English literature to a greater extent than those who work in the field does not add any value to what we want to do.

I thank the Minister of State. These were my concerns. This measure was not driven by educational considerations, certainly as far as the universities were concerned. That was a pity because this kind of measure causes demoralisation of staff, with yet another set of bureaucrats to report to. The best part of what we do is when we relate to our students and the academic world in other countries. Relating to bureaucracy simply wastes a lot of time and money.