Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support the tremendous work done by Senator Barrett in looking at our model of third level and fourth level education, and coming up with an innovative way to fund it - even though the Bill does not deal directly with it - and providing autonomy. To reinforce Senator Colm Burke's last point, autonomy is important in that researchers seek to provide funding to universities and particularly seek to provide funding and have research carried out by universities that have a high degree of autonomy, are in control of their own destiny and have the cutting edge capabilities in terms of academic resources. In order to do that, accepting all the provisions of Senator Barrett's Bill would be brilliant for the country.

We have to view what we define government to be. Is it that government will control everything in the economy, including all the funding going into education even though it does not control it because it represents only about 50% of the money going to third level education at the moment? It has decreased by about 25% since 2009. The thrust of Senator Barrett's contribution was that we are moving towards a 50-50 scenario given the reduction in the State's current and capital funding of third level education in recent years.

If that decrease is to continue and we go towards 50-50, should the Minister entrusted by the people through the Oireachtas as the people's representative in Government - irrespective of who that person is in future years - have the autonomy to dictate the direction of third level education from within the sector itself, and also regarding staffing, major strategic decisions and the objectives of third level education? I would argue not.

It would not be fair to assume that the State should have such a controlling or dominant effect on our third level education sector when the taxpayer is not fully funding the sector and when the constraints of State could be holding the sector back. Very often governments are slow to move. Ireland is a small player in the overall global economy. We are moving into an area of globalisation, market-state economy, and therefore the fastest to move generally can attract the investment. Very often states are not the fastest to move. States are very often dominated by political parties, which by their nature are not the fastest to move.

Many arguments could be presented to support the Bill. We have some of the best academics in the world in this country and they should be supported. One way of doing so is to provide the autonomy to the universities to go and win the global investment available and attract the research funding available. Even here in Ireland the State is giving about €900 million in research money to third level institutions. The rest is coming to the universities through the State grant model. Improving universities' capabilities would improve the resource they provide to the State.

There is considerable merit to what Senator Barrett has proposed. I hope the Minister will accept the merits of his work and his contribution this evening. Even if some tweaking is required, I urge the Minister to accept the Bill for the future of third and fourth level education in this country. Students coming from outside the country, particularly students from outside the European Union, are paying to gain educational opportunities and they tend to be economically very beneficial. So there are merits and I hope the Bill will be accepted without the need to divide the House in order that we can have progress in this area.

Third level education is at a crossroads, but the State's financial input into the sector is depleting. Unless the State is going to provide the money - I do not think it is going to do that - it needs to provide universities with the autonomy to raise that funding from either inside or outside the State in order to develop cutting-edge academia at third and fourth level, which would benefit Ireland Inc. long into the future. That has been proven by the figures Senator Barrett gave for the economic outputs of €7.4 billion coming from the seven universities alone. I know the ITs do a tremendous amount of work and they are building all the time.

So it is a good news story of success and one we can sell worldwide. Many students throughout the world want to come to Ireland. For example, Trinity College is seen throughout the world as a place where students want to come - they want to come to Dublin to study. Let us give them the opportunity, but we need to give the universities the leverage to do that first.