Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My colleague, Senator Malcolm Byrne, made reference to how many inputs I made to pre-legislative scrutiny. I sit on two extremely busy committees, the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence and the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. I was also sitting on the Joint Committee on Public Petitions at the time, as well as conducting normal day-to-day business. I did not have any input in pre-legislative scrutiny in this area, as I am sure Senator Byrne does not have an input in foreign affairs, transport or some of the other areas. That does not preclude me from taking on board advice given to me by academics, members of trade unions and those who appeared before the very committee the Senator spoke about to try to have included in the legislation issues such as that addressed by Senator McDowell some time ago, namely, the overarching power of the chief executive officer, without any reference to his or her board, with respect to sanctions.

I made the point, as a former president of a trade union, that there should be provision to have academic representation from IFUT or the TUI. It works very well on the Teaching Council and I do not see any reason it would not work on this authority. I have every faith in the Minister. I have supported him in public on many of the things he has done. He is far-sighted and has ambition for higher and further education in this country, the like of which I have not seen before. I compliment him on that. However, the Minister will leave office at some stage and another Minister will be appointed who may not be the same type of person or may not hold the same principles as he does. What we are trying to do here is to define for the next Minister precisely what should be in this legislation.

The only issue on which I differ slightly with Senator Norris is on the academic experts or members. They should be drawn from IFUT or TUI, which are the main trade unions represented in the higher and further education sector. From that point of view, that is the argument I am making. We will not reach an amendment about having local authority members represented on the various boards included in this Bill. I will not take away from the considerable work done on this Bill but, at the end of day, there is a reasonable argument for this and it is not a lot to ask that it be taken on board.