Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like Senator Reilly, I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, in bringing forward this amendment. This achieves, in a pragmatic but principled way, an objective which many Members of this House support which is that the Department of Education and Skills should on the one hand fulfil its function of defending the status of university in Ireland internationally and uphold the standards of Irish education in general, as regards university activity and the use of that term, and on the other hand should recognise that the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is a hugely important part of our medical educational apparatus. It has university status de factoin the sense that its degrees are recognised internationally and on the same level as postgraduate and doctoral degrees from our universities. The RCSI was already, as a matter of law, permitted to use the term university outside the State. It was an artificiality to prevent it from using the term within the State. I commend the Minister of State for putting in place a scheme to allow this to happen. I know it has to be open to others and I see the triple lock mechanism the Minister of State has put in place.

There is a very good one bona fide reason we do not want people masquerading as universities, or simply setting up limited liability companies and purporting to be a university. That would be wrong. Nor do we want people landing in Ireland from other jurisdictions and claiming to be a university institution in Ireland over which effectively there is no standard or control as to the activities of such an institution.

Senator Reilly and I, differently, separately and together, came forward with ideas to bring about this result and the Minister of State's proposal has the advantage that it has been finely tuned to meet all the reasonable and well-grounded safeguard functions of the State and the Department of Education and Skills in this matter.

I hope this procedure which we are putting in place will be speedily operated in the case of the RCSI and I hope that in regard to others it will be used very sparingly indeed, if at all, and only in circumstances where people come up to the high standards of the or RCSI, which is something that would be very difficult and rare to do.

I congratulate the Minister of State and her Department for making this pragmatic but principled decision.I congratulate the Minister of State on making this pragmatic but principled decision. I am very grateful to her for listening to the Members of this House who have come forward with this proposal and for accommodating us in these two amendments.