Sean Barrett (Independent)

My concern is that this is adding yet another layer of bureaucracy. At present two people are responsible, the person who gives the lectures and the external examiner. We had a very good discussion with the Minister of State on that point and he assured me that it will remain and has been a feature of Irish universities for 400 to 500 years. I am glad to report my personal experience at the BESS meeting on final year courses, where the external examiner who is on over 40 final year courses commented most favourable on the students, the lecturing and on the pastoral care received by students.

I do not know why universities have not promoted that. In a sense what we are now trying to correct is a problem that they created themselves by not drawing the attention of the appropriate authorities to the fact that there has been an external examiner system in operation pretty much throughout the lifetime of the university institutions, that degrees at the top level are acceptable for those who want to enter Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and the rest and our students have pretty good employment records. If somebody does not give a very good lecture, 400 people will know pretty quickly and the head of the department will know. It strikes me that we should keep it simple, to use that old slogan, as we have made the system much more complicated. I am not so sure of the purpose of this complexity. Obviously the Qualifications and Quality Assurance Authority of Ireland should consult with the institutions it is examining but one wonders what is the purpose of having the Higher Education Authority as well. If we have a quality officer in each university, the Irish Universities Quality Board, the Higher Education Authority and the Qualifications and Quality Assurance Authority of Ireland, together with the external examiner and the head of the department, we will have four or five people supervising a single person giving a lecture. It is an unnecessary ratio of overheads to directly productive activity.

Many people in the universities have lost the plot on that, but the important thing is that the intake of 400 people in September should know a lot more by the time they get to the following May. There is no need for all these supervisory grades, one such person in an Irish institution was called a self licking ice cream recently. One should know when a lecturer has communicated the knowledge, the external examiners will confirm that and the head of the department should know it. I would be parsimonious, particularly in times of tight finance, at extending the range of bureaucracy further. That was a large part of the debate we had with the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, the last day.

If we had critical problems, as the Minister knows, I would be one of the first persons in here to say that. I have criticised enough institutions but the standard of lecturing has not come to my notice. Is this an excessively large administrative response to what may be a very small problem? If the universities had presented it properly, it may have been a minimal problem. When I move my amendments, I will return to the topic. I thank the Minister for bringing this to our attention.