Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support Senators Norris and Quinn. It is appalling that we would allow changes to the privileges and practices of this House without a debate.I have spoken many times on the issue of speaking time for people, such as myself, who are not members of groups or the way the House divides on party political grounds rather than on vocational panels which is what we are elected to. It would be healthy to discuss these issues in the open.

I rise this morning to speak on teachers, lecturers, institutes of technology and technological universities. We are about to have a teachers' strike and nobody is saying a word about it because we are heading towards an election and nobody wants to speak about things that are nasty. We need to have engagement with teachers. The system is crumbling. We need engagement and discussions with them. In the rush for technological universities I ask the Leader to confirm that the Technological Universities Bill 2015 will not come before the House before the general election. We cannot rush a Bill of that magnitude through this House in a matter of a couple of days purely to satisfy the electoral ambitions of somebody or other on the other side of the House. It is simply outrageous. At the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection yesterday some very distinguished academics appeared before it who all agreed that the move towards technological universities was ill-advised in the way in which it is going forward. One point made by Dr. Greg Foley from DCU was that we will finish up with 16 universities in this country and no alternative pathway. The focus is on level 8 qualifications and we are pushing people through universities, towards a level 8 qualification, who are not sufficiently able to reach that level. The focus on level 6 and level 7 qualifications has gone. We no longer have that focus. I accept the Government has done much to assist apprenticeships but we need to broaden the vocational base of education in Ireland and I think the Technological Universities Bill 2015 needs to be set aside until the next Government is in place. We have in the Visitors Gallery a number of people from Cork Institute of Technology who would like to meet Members of both Houses to outline some of their concerns. I ask Members that if they meet them during the course of the day to give them a few moments of their time.