Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. This is a very important Bill. Sadly, this this House has got to the stage where contributions are limited to five minutes, which is inadequate. W.B. Yeats’s great speech “We are no petty people” would have been ruled out after about two paragraphs, given how we now operate things.

I have huge problems with this Bill. I want to outline some of them to the Minister. First, I do not think it is correct that the Minister should choose the appointees to the Higher Education Authority in the way that is provided for in this Bill. We can look at the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board and other institutions. There, at least, they have to go through the Public Appointments Service, PAS, or something to be approved for membership of these bodies. Yet, here, the Minister has total discretion in relation to appointments. The criteria for appointment are so general that effectively the Minister of the day will choose the board of An t-Údarás.

The second issue I want to raise is a really serious problem with the legislation. Could I draw the attention of the House to section 143 in respect of guidelines, codes and policies? An tÚdarás may prepare or adopt and issue guidelines, codes or policies to designated institutions of higher education for any purpose relating to this Act and concerning any matter or thing referred to in this Act or any other enactment, and the implementation of any policy or objective of the Minister or the Government. It can say, “It is Government policy to do this and we are issuing a guideline”. What is the consequence of that? We then find, if we go to section 64, that the chief executive officer of an t-Údarás is entitled to determine that an institution is in breach of a Government policy guideline and can take certain steps in relation to that. The steps are set out in section 66. At the moment, with the exception of the measures as in subsections 66(3)(a), 66(3((b) and 66(3)(d), which relate to a requirement to undertake a course of training or review of the strategic development plan of the institution, the chief executive officer is entitled to make a determination under this section without the consent of the board. One of the things he can do without the consent of the board is the withholding by an t-Údarás of funding due to be paid to the institution of the refund of funding paid by an t-Údarás to it. Why would something like that not require a majority of the board to say they agree with this, especially if the power of admonishment to the institution does require a majority consent?

I am talking about the whole idea of university autonomy. Government policy is to be handed to a university and the person who enforces compliance with the Government policy is the chief executive of an t-Údarás. He can make a decision to withhold funding from an institution if it is not complying with it in his view. The only remedy is to appeal to an appeals board. The appeals board deals with appeals not merely from him but from the Minister. The Minister chooses the people who will be on the appeals board to decide his own case. This is fascinating. Under the Act, he choose the three people. It is a very unusual situation. The Bill says that they are to be independent, but you choose three people to vet yourself. That is wrong. All of that is wrong.

There is another issue, which is a minor matter. However, it is something that I would ask the Minister to take account of. In a number of cases, if a person is sentenced to imprisonment by a court of competent jurisdiction, they cease to be a member of the governing body or whatever it may be. If, for instance, the president of the student union is given a seven-day public order offence for a demonstration, or something like that, he or she is gone. That is not right.

I have only had five minutes. I do not want to delay the House. There is the combination of the power of the Government to enact a policy being handed to the chief executive of an t-Údarás and for him to cut off funding to a university or institute of higher education for non-compliance with Government policy. The whole idea of university autonomy is being inverted by that. A lot more thought needs to go into this Bill in order to conserve autonomy.

I will finish on this point. We do not need to rush this through. It has gone so far. We are coming up to the end of July. I know even from the courts that everyone suddenly gets into a neurotic state of mind and thinks that if it is not done now it will never be done. However, this Bill needs very serious further consideration. It should not be guillotined and it should not be rushed through.