Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I welcome the Bill, which will shortly create a new Department to represent higher and further education, research and innovation at Cabinet. I congratulate the Minister, Deputy Harris, and the Minister of State on their expected appointments at the Department once the legal changes are finalised and I wish them both well in their new roles.

I welcome the Bill in that at least it is a demonstration by the incoming Government that it intends to approach higher education issues with a greater degree of seriousness in the coming term. I was a member of the Oireachtas education and skills committee and it was an unfortunate reality that higher and further education were not given the attention and funding required, as demonstrated by the shameless inaction over the past four years on the 2016 Cassells report on third level funding. I am holding out hope this will change in the lifetime of the Government. However, I did not believe a new Department was necessary for these issues to be dealt with.

I am concerned the huge degree of legal and administrative work that goes into separating Departments and the associated ministerial functions could easily take away from the extremely important issues at play in the higher education sector. I would appreciate some assurances from the Minister of State in this regard. Will he assure us this work will not detract from the ability of the Department to administer and reform this crucial sector in the short, medium and long term? As a representative of a university in the Oireachtas I assure the Minister of State that such assurances will be well received by my constituents. I have heard about the considerable financial and administrative difficulties that have arisen with past divisions of Departments and I would welcome an assurance that lessons have been learned in the Department concerned.

With regard to the Department itself, I want to put a number of issues on the record with regard to how it will operate, its functions and priorities, and how best to balance them. The absolute number one priority of the new Minister and the Department must be the resolution of the third level funding crisis and making an early decision on a long-term funding model for the sector. In 2016, the Cassells report stated a decision could not wait. It has been four long years since then and with universities no longer able to rely on international student fees to make up funding shortfalls due to Covid-19 the sector is at true crisis level. I welcomed the €168 million announced yesterday and I thank the Minister of State for his work in securing it. The focus on the digital divide and supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged students during Covid is particularly welcome.However, it is unfortunately a drop in the ocean compared to the structural financial reform needed in the sector, especially given that the Cassells report of 2016 called for increased annual funding of €600 million by 2021. We conducted significant work in this area in the previous education committee, where we heard significant evidence in opposition to student loans and the mechanism to fund the sector. I urge the Minister to heed that. As a result, once again I ask him to look at significantly increasing public funding to the sector to allow it to return to a solid financial footing. This will, in turn, prevent the further commercialisation of the higher education system, as universities would not be forced to spend so much time and energy identifying alternative funding streams. It would also allow for a reversal of the concerning fall by Irish universities in recent international ranking publications. I welcome the improvement in Trinity's placement on the recently published QS rankings. This continued underfunding is indefensible and cannot continue. It must be the number one priority of the new Minister.

I have also long been concerned by the commercial focus and outputs of some research institutions and the inclusion of the word "innovation" in the new Department's title concerns me further. It is very important for the new Department to continue to fund arts research to the same degree as research in the STEM areas, even if such research has valuable outputs that do not register on certain economic indicators. This has been a particular concern with Science Foundation Ireland's funding decision mechanisms. In the previous Dáil, Deputy Lawless introduced the Industrial Development (Science Foundation Ireland) (Amendment) Bill 2018, which would require the body to split research funding fairly between original and applied research. This is a big concern of mine for the new Department and I urge the Minister to allay publicly some of those concerns. Will he progress Deputy Lawless's legislation and how does it stand with the new Government? Arts research is incredibly important in making sense of human experience and it must not fall by the wayside by having language normally relating to business, enterprise and commerce tied into the title of the responsible Department.

I would also appreciate if the Minister could indicate his support for the independence and autonomy of the research sector, the importance of fundamental research and scholarship and, in particular, academic freedom. There have been concerning trends in the US and in the UK in terms of the political nature of Government funding decisions, and that is without even mentioning the appalling situation in the higher education sector in Hungary and the outright attacks on academic independence and freedom there. I would appreciate if the Minister could indicate his awareness of these issues and his determination to ensure they do not play out in any form in the Irish context. This also extends to ensuring fair and appropriate funding for the sector rather than allowing it to rely excessively on funding from commercial, industrial and private sources that may seek to influence research processes and results. This is key, and I would appreciate a commitment from the Minister in this area.

I have a similar concern about the national training fund levy, which is applied on employers to fund national efforts by the State to educate and train the workforce. I was concerned by moves in the previous Oireachtas to give employers even more of a say in how the fund was spent, which led to criticism on the ground that industry and commerce were having a disproportionate influence on how the fund was allocated and managed. Employers are important stakeholders in national training policy but the State should direct policy to the national skills gap, not solely satisfying the demands of employers. Will the Minister take responsibility for this levy in the creation of the new Department and will he commit that industry input will be kept to an absolute minimum?

I know this Bill simply puts the legalities in place for the Department to be set up, but the decision to give higher education an entire Department to itself is significant and will come with major challenges. Recent experience in the UK shows that a similar move in that jurisdiction led to an increased focus within the department there on the privatisation and commercialisation of higher education. I urge the Minister to resist seriously any attempts to make similar moves here in Ireland. I wish the Minister and the Minister of State well in their roles and I look forward to working with them in the future.