Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have great time for Senator Clonan. Disagreement is not a bad thing but I do fundamentally disagree with him on this point. I ask people to accept my bona fides that we are going to bring forward legislation. Nobody in this House has bothered to do that in the past. I do not mean the Members of this Oireachtas and I do not say that about anybody in this House. We, as an Oireachtas, have never done this before. We have never before brought forward a students union Bill. I am saying we should do that and get it right. There have been good ideas from all sides of the House in respect of some of those issues. We should co-design the legislation with the students union movement. We should get on and do it. I believe that.

I do not mean to be disagreeable but I will turn to consider the definitions. Senator Clonan was not a Member of the House when we voted on the Technological Universities Act, but many people here were and voted for it. In the Technological Universities Act 2018, a student is defined as a person registered as a student or a full-time office of the students union. There are different definitions in the Universities Act and the Institutes of Technology Act. This is part of the challenge. There has not been one definition in the sectoral legislation. There are three different definitions.

We are trying to get this right. There is also flexibility, which is not a bad thing in respect of students. Section 16(2)(d)(iv) of the Universities Act provides for either two or three students who are elected officers of the students union. I know of students unions that might want their representatives to be chosen by the students union but not to be an elected officer. There are many examples where a students union might want-----