Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. I have a particular interest in this legislation having been a member of the governing body of the UCC and the HEA board, in a previous life. This legislation has been mooted for a while and it is good to see it come through the Houses. I welcome the fact that the Minister has had extensive engagement both with the joint committee and in the Dáil on amendments and stuff like that. I hope that he is just as enthusiastic with amendments in this House.

A number of issues that I wished to mention have already been raised and I shall repeat them. I wish to discuss the balance of power in terms of the CEO of the HEA. The Minister has agreed that three out of the nine areas would have to go to the HEA board for permission for the CEO to follow-up on. Given our capacity nowadays to meet within 24 hours using Zoom technology then we do not have to wait to get people in. The old argument that the board could not be constituted quickly enough for a serious matter no longer stands because, as we have seen over the past two years, we can constitute people from any part of the world within quite short notice. The old argument is not a strong enough reason not to stipulate that one needs HEA board approval for all nine areas.

In the past few days I spoke to representatives of different groups who feel very strongly about this matter. It seems that we have nearly gotten there with three areas and we should go the whole way with the remaining areas. As a former member of the HEA board I know that if something serious arose that the CEO felt required a level of mediation or whatever then we would all hop to it pretty quickly. In addition, if one is a member of the board then one is committed to education. Therefore, it would be worthwhile for the Minister to consider expanding this provision to the nine areas.

I feel that this legislation centres power with the one person who is the CEO. We are proposing legislation that depends on the will of one person to do what is right, to initiate and to be the judge. Is there a gap between the spirit and intent of this legislation? I ask because that is a lot of judge and jury for one person.

As some groups have mentioned, there are issues with codes and guidelines. There is a list of codes and guidelines. However, if one does not comply with them then there will be a series of consequences. I do not believe that these are guidelines if there are consequences. The Minister will appoint the members of the appeals board and one member must have legal expertise such as a barrister or equivalent. It is important that the legislation stipulates that a person has higher education knowledge. It is obvious that one of the members must have higher education knowledge. If the legislation explicitly stipulates that one person must have legal knowledge then we should stipulate that a person has higher education knowledge, and perhaps even from an international perspective. I hope that the appeals board will be extremely rarely used but if we are going to establish a board then we may as well properly constitute it.

Originally, this Bill was due to be about governance. Perhaps, it is testament to the Minister or his team that this Bill has gone a little beyond a governance framework. It is a broad and encompassing Bill. Obviously the Bill does not deal with the future funding of higher education and the committee is compiling a report on funding.

I note the correspondence that the Minister had with the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, around dealing with the issue of a students' union and defining a students' union. That issue could not be covered in this Bill. The definition of a students' union, who they are and who the Government can engage with have been matters between the old Department of Education and now we have a different Department. A variety of political parties have consistently opposed the basic concept of defining a students' union, which seems strange. There is no great threat to be derived from defining students' unions. Without being too pedantic, a student union is for one student and a students' union is for all of the students. I thought that it might be a bit crazy to propose a cacophony of amendments seeing as "a student union" seems to be the agreed terminology. Following the point that Senator Norris made about grammatical errors then we, students' union people, will live on with our "s".

The term "value for money" has been used quite a lot when discussing this legislation. Without question, we want to see value for taxpayers' money. Sometimes when we talk about value for money we gloss over the fact that the Government supplies the money and for quite some time institutions have run things while being quite underfunded. It is important to put on the record that while we are in favour of value for money, the institutions have worked in a very tight system that creaks at the seams to provide value for money when the money was not there.

A previous speaker alluded to the following matter. When we consider the TU mergers one realises that there are multiple campuses. Those mergers have been worked on for quite some time and are quite delicate sometimes. Has the Minister given consideration to temporarily allowing the governing bodies to allow for representation by a variety of campuses that will eventually merge into one TU? Has this matter arisen? I suggest that a temporary facilitation for the next ten years is given to allow a smooth merger and thus listen to the voices on the boards.

Concern has been raised about support staff and trade union representation. I am concerned because both at a local governing body level and at the HEA level there is no specific reference to representation.

This Bill is significant legislation that will shift how the HEA will operate. A new Department has operated for two years. It is important that the HEA is not reduced to an entity that just distributes money and then chases people when they do not distribute money. Even when I was a member of the HEA board, the HEA advocated and lobbied on behalf of the sector.It is important that it does not get shifted the other way where the HEA becomes something of a sheriff around town as to who gets what money and what happens with it and then loses the ability to advocate on behalf of what is a very large sector, given the HEA has over €2 billion. I am still not entirely sure if the balance as to where that needs to be is exactly right in the legislation, but I look forward to engaging with the Minister further as we go through the different Stages.