Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The current legislation is not fit for purpose. The Bill before us needs to come into play right now. A body of work is being done by all our HEIs and the stakeholders that have been involved but we need to crave success and excellence and there needs to be a sense of competition between our technological universities and our HEIs. We need to reach those rankings again. We need to ensure that through our peer-review system, which has been set up by Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council, IRC, we will reward and support as much as possible those research teams that are achieving success, but we cannot do that until investment is in place. When it is, universities will in turn also have opportunities to bring in further income based on that Government investment.

It is crucial the international reputation of the higher education sector be aligned. The Government and representatives such as the Minister, the Department and the HEIs must be aligned in what we want to see as success for the third level sector. Success comes in many different forms. It can be 200,000 people achieving qualifications, Ireland ranking high in innovation, and building research teams that excel and draw down funding. If we do not see that happen at every level in every section of our third level, that is where I would say we would need to come back to it. There is going to be a lot of monitoring and review of this legislation. We need to show it is fit for purpose, and we will talk through all these sections as we move through it.

I appreciate the fact the student voice has been included, particularly at secondary school level during the lockdowns and earlier during the pandemic, and that we are now bringing this through at third level as well in the form of the competency-based nature of the governing boards. They will be crucial to support our HEIs where there are gaps because they will be able to offer that student voice. Other areas we have spoken about and which the IUA has raised relate to the chief executive of the Higher Education Authority and how we are going to think about financial issues. The CEO's role will be under the funding conditions set out for each of our HEIs and there will be able to be a quick and speedy response in funding. There will also be an appeals process and board approval for a lot of other measures when it is considered what is going to be done in terms of the outcomes of any type of review. It is important the policies being developed by the HEA will also include a public consultation section and that it will allow all stakeholders to feed in to these policies that will be developed to help improve the sector for all of them.

As for the three-person appeals board, I acknowledge amendments have been taken on board relating to the ten-year period of experience for the barristers and solicitors. We are also looking at ensuring that someone who sits on that appeals board will have knowledge of the Irish third level sector. Of course it can be someone from an international background, but he or she will need to have knowledge of the Irish third level landscape. We are very different from many other countries. The UK is no longer in the EU and is no longer drawing down non-Exchequer funding from Europe, while the US has the National Science Foundation, NSF, and the National Institutes of Health, NIH, a very different model from that in Ireland. It is crucial that anyone involved in the appeals process really sees what is needed here.

This legislation is absolutely necessary because we want a world-class third level sector and that will happen only when we have this legislation in place to support our HEIs.