Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also extend my welcome and good regards to Ambassador Karadjova. I had the pleasure of visiting Bulgaria and the Rila Monastery about 16 years ago, but I was informed by her of the fact that Mr. Bourchier was buried there. I was not there with a group of Irish people, so I was not aware of it. It is a beautiful country. We are delighted to see the ambassador, although the times are very challenging for any neighbour of Ukraine at the moment. We wish them well.

This morning I want to talk about the resignation of Professor Ben Tonra who has resigned as vice principal for internationalisation and global engagement at the UCD college of social sciences and law. This must be a siren to academics and to the Government in this country that there is a real danger surrounding funding of third level education. For some years, in particular since we introduced free fees, mar dhea, and the removal of the ability of universities to fundraise directly through that stream, for example, funding for the third level sector has become increasingly difficult. We now have a situation where universities are going all out to raise funds through many different streams and students are one of them, but there are also industry partners, international partners and research. All those aspects have now become independent funding streams for third level. The danger is that it has left universities open to exploitation. Where there is money, it will often follow academic activity. The question is how independent the activity is and how it stands alone from the benefactor or the person who is funding it.

China is a part of that. The funding of the Confucius Institute in UCD started a long time ago as part of the university's Asia strategy at a time when China appeared to be opening up and moving more towards wanting to be a constructive member of the international community. The reality is that China's funding of the Confucius Institute and other measures comes with baggage and requirements. I have raised this issue directly with the Minister for Education on the leaving certificate Mandarin syllabus. We have a situation where Mandarin Chinese teachers are coming to Ireland from China. They will only teach the simplified characters in respect of Mandarin that are used in mainland China. We do not explore the possibility, for example, of Cantonese or other Chinese dialects being available to students here and we do not explore the opportunity for them to use the traditional characters that are used in places like Taiwan. There is a real danger now that the academic integrity of institutions like the Confucius Institute and other institutes in UCD and other universities around the country will be compromised by funding from the likes of China and other international stakeholders.

The fact Professor Tonra has now essentially put his job on the line – he will remain an academic at UCD but he has stepped back as vice principal for internationalisation and global engagement - must be a serious warning for the Government, the Department of Education and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science that they must look at funding for third level institutions. At this point, they must review how the universities are funded to examine whether we as a State should be putting in place measures to protect them from this kind of exploitation.