Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for engaging. I join with Senator Malcolm Byrne in thanking my officials for also engaging. There has been engagement between Committee and Report Stages. I acknowledge the good faith with which Senators have engaged and thank them for it.

This is an issue we have been grappling with, particularly in view of the fact that the purpose of the Bill is to strengthen the role of students and student engagement, to clarify opportunities for engagement and to give the HEA teeth where any issue regarding student unions, including their funding, is unresolved. I want to see provisions in the Bill that will enable the HEA to pursue any HEI that does not respect the independence of a student union when it comes to funding. I have seen examples where that has not happened at times, which I am not pleased about. The Bill will present a new opportunity for those issues to be addressed robustly, recognising the independence and autonomy of student unions. There is no disagreement on that, although it might suit some people to suggest there is. Rather, there is a legislative process wherein we are grappling with what can and cannot be put into a Bill and we are looking at the legal advice in that regard. We discussed the issue at great length in the Dáil. I have also discussed it directly with the Union of Students in Ireland, and I have sought legal advice on it from the Office of the Attorney General. For those reasons, I am not in a position to accept the amendment, although I will explain why that is the reality and what the amendment would do versus what some people think it would do.

One key method of addressing student unions’ autonomy is to utilise section 143. Students now have such a section that will provide an opportunity to enforce student autonomy, an important point. Section 143 will provide the HEA with powers relating to policies, codes and guidelines that it has not previously had. I will work with Senators and student unions and we do not need to wait for changes of Ministers or governments or make reference to any other European country. As soon as we get the Bill passed, we can get absolute clarity, in guidelines, policy and codes of practice from the HEA, about the autonomy and funding independence of our student unions, and we will do that. The challenge is that the role of student unions and many other stakeholders is limited in the Bill to the right to be consulted. Where student unions and other stakeholders are referenced in this Bill, it is done in the context of the right to be consulted on a variety of areas, such as planning for the provision of higher education, the preparation of strategic development plans, the equality statement of the HEI and the preparation of guidelines, codes and policies.

As my party colleague, Senator Dolan, reminds us, there is already a definition of student unions in both the Universities Act and in the Technological Universities Act 2018, while sections 106 and 117 of the Bill will insert mirror definitions of the section 2(1) definition of a student union into the Institutes of Technology Act and the National College of Art and Design Act 1971. The legal concern is that any change to the definition of a student union in section 2(1) of the Bill, even though I accept it is done in good faith, would put the definition out of line with the definitions in the sectoral legislation. There are broader definitions of a student union in other sectoral legislation that will come forward with this Bill, and if we endeavour to insert a prescriptive definition of a student union into this part of the Bill, we will knock it out of line with the existing definition in the Universities Act, the Institutes of Technology Act, the National College of Art and Design Act and the Technological Universities Act.

I read somewhere that I had stated there was legal advice I could not share with the Seanad, but that is not what the record of the Seanad will show. On Committee Stage, I relayed to Seanad Éireann the legal advice I had received on this. I very much stand over that advice. The unintended consequences of the amendment would be detrimental to student unions; that is the genuine legal advice and view I have. Section 143 will provide us with an opportunity to copper-fasten the rules of engagement, the structures in place and student unions' independence and autonomy regarding funding.

The amendment relating to the citizens' assembly on the future of education proposes the inclusion of a new section that would provide for the Minister to lay a report before the Houses of the Oireachtas on the implementation of any recommendations from the citizens' assembly. I am, of course, looking forward to the establishment of the citizens' assembly and to its recommendations. Any recommendations can be incorporated under section 33, on the strategy for tertiary education, but considering the Citizens' Assembly has not yet been established, let alone reported, it would not be appropriate to put it in primary legislation in the way the amendment endeavours to do.