David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is appropriate, as the Minister of State says, that when dealing with technological subjects a significant proportion of the staff should have PhDs and some professional qualifications and experience in the wider world. As far as universities go, however, I can only speak from my own experience 50 years ago, when Trinity College was a very different place and when by far the best teacher I had was a wonderful man called Robert Butler Digby French. He had a BA. His entire contribution to scholarship was a monograph on P.G. Wodehouse but he was unquestionably the greatest teacher I have ever encountered. That was the thing about the universities in those days. They did not become PhD machines. People were respected for their different qualities, and teaching was regarded at that point as a very significant element. He was a charming man who, 40 years after his death, is still remembered with great affection by what I am sorry to say is a dwindling number of his former students.

While for a technological university these PhD qualifications and experience in the professional world are very significant, we must remember the humane examples of somebody like R.B.D. French who was a man of extraordinarily wide culture, beloved of the students and in one way he did have a professional experience of some sort because he was the principal playwright for the Dublin University Players. He wrote all their reviews and skits. They may be taken as just entertainment but they were absolutely wonderful.

On a deeper level he had a mastery and capacity to communicate his understanding of late medieval theatre and the Augustan period. I remember him once talking about the heroic couplet when he said:

Oh it is, dear boy, the love of symmetry and line and engagement. Just look out at the Front Square and you will see exactly what I mean reflected in stone.

That said it all. He was wonderful with his BA. One of my colleagues in Trinity told me that if I was not careful I would end up as another R.B.D. French and I said that was the greatest compliment that had ever been paid to me.