Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The House is becoming notorious for its lack of legislation. More than 26 Bills are stuck on Committee Stage in the Dáil, which could easily be advanced and taken here. If the Government is not prepared to send its legislation here, then let us deal with the massive number of Private Members' Bills currently before the Dáil. Let us facilitate their passage through Committee Stage in the Dáil and I am sure other Senators will be as eager as we are in the Sinn Féin team to fulfil our function and do the job we were sent here to do. Statements should only occur on issues where there is a divergence of opinion among Members and parties. Where there is a broad consensus on an issue such as childhood obesity, it is pointless to have two hours of statements with every Senator agreeing more needs to be done.

I would like to raise the recent developments at the Castlebar campus of GMIT. While I welcome the news of the formation of the HEA working group to secure a sustainable future for the campus, I was astonished to learn last week that the situation had escalated for staff and, indeed, students of the campus. Numerous staff have been requested to move to the GMIT campus at Dublin Road, Galway, which is a 175-mile round trip from Castlebar. They have been told that there will be no forced redeployments to Galway but anyone who does not volunteer within three weeks will be placed on a surplus list and not replaced, with the institute washing its hands of such persons. This is a blatant attempt to undermine the Mayo campus and no redeployments, reassignments or surplus list can reasonably be agreed to prior to the HEA working group's report.

Students on one programme have been informed that their add-on level 8 course will not be run in September. This is a deliberate attempt to leave their lecturers without hours to teach and put them under pressure to reassign to Galway. There is a complete absence of transparency and fairness in the procedures used by the institute in suspending this and other CAO-listed programmes at the Mayo campus. Some of the courses being cut have received increased applications in comparison with last year. Courses being cut are in key economic growth sectors such as construction, cultural tourism and digital media. Development of new courses on the campus has been halted pending the outcome of the HEA working group process.

I request that the redeployment process be similarly paused to allow the HEA work to proceed. We are at a critical juncture regarding the future of the Mayo campus and I ask that the Minister for Education and Skills intervene and use his position to ensure a strong and sustainable future for a multidisciplinary GMIT campus. I implore the Leader to ask him to halt what is being done there until the working group reports back with its recommendations.