Seanad debates

Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Higher Education Authority Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed)

 

10:00 am

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to amendment No. 317, for which I am responsible, and make a few points with regard to what has already been said. I remember when I was in student politics in Galway. I was elected president of the students' union there in 1991. It was for the Minister of the day to officially approve my appointment to the governing body of UCG, as it was. I remember these things took time. As sabbatical officers came and went, year in, year out, it was not always the case that the minute people were elected, their membership of the board of governors of the governing body would be ratified. The problem with that was dealt with by the governing body admitting me as a non-voting member until such time as the Minister of the day would ratify me. I cannot remember whether it was Noel Davern or Mary O'Rourke who was the Minister at the time. It was just as well that I was allowed to attend meetings because the Minister never got around to ratifying me during the course of the year. I remember, on one occasion, having completely forgotten about the matter and when I went to vote on an amendment or a point on which a vote was called by the governing body, I put up my hand. The then runaí um ghnóthaí acadúla, the secretary for academic affairs, brought me down with a bang and said that the vote was 24, instead of 25, agus nach raibh an tUasal Ó Maoláin ceadaithe go fóill.

I understand and respect the importance of student representation on important bodies and, therefore, I understand why the legislation makes specific reference to the appointment of student representation to an t-údarás. However, it highlights the distinct oddness of the absence of a specific reference to academic representation on an t-údarás. It is fine for the Minister to say this is because this is a competency-based body rather than a representative body. I believe that is the gist of his rationale for this exclusion. Does one infer from that, therefore, that it would not be enough protection for student representation to leave it to the Minister to judge that in appointing a competency-based body, it would be necessary to have student representation?It seems to me that there is an element of sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander to this. Students are stakeholders with competency to participate in a board of governors of an t-údarás, the HEA or a university or designated institution, as are academics. We can all see how any test of competency, to have all the necessary skills and perspectives under the heading of "competence" for such a board, would require student and academic representation. The fact is that the Minister has chosen to specifically reference student representation but not academic representation. He cannot explain away that anomaly by referring to the fact that it is the responsibility of the Minister to make competency based appointments and imply that academics will, of course, be a part of that. It is not sufficient to imply it when the Minister specified another category, as he did with students, in another part of the Bill.

On that very subject, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's phrase to Mikhail Gorbachev; "Let me tell you why we don't trust you". The Minister talks about competency based bodies but I refer to the very point that Senator McDowell raised, which is the non-amenability of the CEO to the board of an t-údarás regarding certain very serious decisions the CEO may have to make. The CEO is amenable and requires the approval of the board of an t-údarás in certain decisions on compliance and measures, "remedial and other measures" is the phrase used in the Bill, that may have to be taken but not in others.

The problem that many universities have with this is that if one is serious about competence being the hallmark and criterion for the appointment of people to the boards of universities, as well as the board of an t-údarás, one must recognise that if people are being put into a position of competence, their competence to govern has to be respected. If they choose to depart from a prescribed guideline, code or policy, if one is to get the balance right in the context of universities as State-funded and State-recognised institutions, but nonetheless independent of the State, one must respect what it means to appoint a competency based board. It means the presumption is that if they have a reason to depart from a particular code, guideline or policy and explain it, that that is a desirable approach. It is not as though there is no further measure open to the HEA if the explanation is unsatisfactory or the problem persists.

The other problem is that universities believe the actual competence of the board of governors is not being respected. They believe respect for their competence would mean that in the decision of a university to sanction or perform remedial or other such measures arising out of actions or failures to act, as seen by the CEO, they should be accountable to decisions that are themselves subject to the approval of a board. In other words, they believe that if a competent board, to whom a president of a university is ultimately responsible, backs the president and the administration of the university in making particular decisions, respect for their competence in getting the structures of all of this right would mean that any decisions, which seek to remedy the situation or intervene, involving serious decisions about the freezing or withholding of funding, because the Minister is insisting in putting competence based boards in place at university level, any decisions to intervene on the recommendation of the CEO of an t-údarás, should by definition be precisely that. They should be decisions on the recommendations of the CEO but approved by the board. The board should be somehow held accountable, ultimately, not by an individual but by another board.

To the argument that the CEO is somehow the Accounting Officer to the Comptroller and Auditor General, or that the CEO is the man or woman in the spot, the fact that the CEO would have to get board approval for a decision in no way takes from the CEO's accountability or legal position of accountability. People come before Oireachtas committees all the time and have to account for their role, decisions and stewardship. It does not mean that the decisions they take are somehow decisions that they are empowered to take completely independently. They are decisions they take because they have boards to which they are accountable.

The Minister has presented the argument - a slippery argument which I ultimately do not believe is valid - that the reason he is not requiring that CEOs be accountable to the board of an t-údarás for certain key and serious actions they want to take in universities, is that somehow it is because they are the person in the accountable spot that justifies him or her not being required to have the approval of the board of an t-údarás. That argument makes no sense. People who are accountable in law for whatever function they hold, in most cases that I can think of, are still accountable to the boards that are behind them. That does not speak to the specific amendment but it does relate to the issue of a competency based board. There is a problem in that aspects of the Bill do not seem to respect the competence and appropriate zone of action of individual universities and governors that hold them to account.

On the subject of amendment No. 317-----

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.