Statements on Education Matters - 10th February 2009

Statements on Education Matters - 10th February 2009
Senator David Norris: I welcome the Minister to the House. He is one of the bright spots in a Government which has become unsure and stumbling in confronting this extremely difficult situation. The Minister has dealt with matters under his aegis with decision and clarity. Not all the decisions are palatable and not all of them recommend themselves. One will have squawks and screeches from all over the place, which is understandable because there is virtue behind some of the complaints, but we are living in an exceptionally difficult situation. I have the greatest respect for my friend and colleague, Senator Buttimer, but as a graduate of Trinity College who lectured there for many years and is strongly supportive of student rights, I feel one cannot dismiss the idea of reintroducing some degree of payment for education, particularly at third level. I say this knowing that it is going to cost me votes. I have said it to student groups, including when I was asked to talk to them in Trinity College. The reason is perfectly simple: in a situation where there are very limited resources, if one wants to achieve social justice those resources are most appropriately directed and targeted at the most vulnerable sections who otherwise would not get to university at all. It will cause some pain to the middle classes but if we want a more equal society, that is what will happen. It will not be popular but it will certainly have to be considered.
I spoke to some of the student representatives but they did not really have a case. First, “free fees” as a statement is rubbish, it is illiterate. There are either fees or education is free — one cannot mix the two up and have free fees. Somebody is paying somewhere, and it is the taxpayer. I am proud to be a part of the Trinity access programme, which brings a small number of people in from disadvantaged areas, although it is not enough.
In a situation where fees are apparently abolished, the most marginalised people find it impossible to get access to university. For example, if they live 30 miles outside Dublin and are going to a city college, they will face the cost of transport, books and accommodation. It rules people out, but the Minister should be ruling people in. Everybody is suspicious because the real problem is the means test. In order to get the support of people like myself who are honourable, honest and will support the Minister, despite the electoral cost, the Minister must indicate his thinking on the means test. It has to be sufficiently high so that people are not caught on a kind of barbed wire of educational disadvantage. The Minister will have my support on fees and I will make that known to my voters and the university circles generally, whatever the cost, because I know that has to happen. We must examine this issue to see if we can make the situation fairer, more just and equitable while still being accessible.

It is very important that we continue to support third level education. The Provost of Trinity College is away, but I was in touch with him by e-mail and he has emphasised the necessity of continuing to promote research. However, he says we should not forget the linkage between research and the teaching commitment, the balance between the sciences and the humanities, the importance that access should be increased, greater activity and entrepreneurship.
I may be parochial in saying this, but I am very proud of all the Dublin universities. I am aware there has been some whispering about mergers and I would like to hear what the Minister has to say on that. I will read what he says later because I have to leave as soon as I make this short speech. The issue of mergers sent a shiver down our spines some time ago and I would like to know what is planned. If mergers are on the agenda, what is in place in that regard? It has been said that the Government feels that four or five universities in Dublin is too many. What is the thinking on this and what kind of rationalisation is involved? I believe all the universities in Dublin are good ones. I am very proud of Dublin City University, that great northside institution. Trinity College hovers on the brink, but never quite made it to the northside. However, it is a wonderful institution and is in the top 200 universities. We can be very proud of its success in the ratings, as we can be of UCD.
The areas of which we can be proud, which is what I think the Provost was getting at, are areas such as innovation, where we get value out of the universities. Universities are not just for chasing ideas, although that is important and must be continued. We must continue programmes in the arts, classics, architecture etc. However, I have just looked at some of the things that have happened in the past year or so through Trinity College. Researchers there developed a test for prediction and risk assessment in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. That is wonderful. The development of this test also involved genetic work. The researchers have developed a new cerebrus spinal fluid that is used as a test for early Alzheimer’s disease and which shows up the production of amyloid plaques on the brain that clog the neural circuits. This is an important advance that will affect people and may lead to the development of a drug to delay or stop onset of the disease. When we consider how the profits from Tysabri reactivated Elan, we can see how this test could lead to creating employment. An important series of discoveries have also been made with regard to coeliac disease, which is a disease where there is an intolerance in the intestine to gluten.
Development of such ideas does not just happen in Trinity College. Researchers at the Waterford Institute of Technology have come up with new ideas in terms of macular degeneration of the retina. I am interested in that because I suffer from it. To a certain extent, macular degeneration is the wearing out of the retina because of age, but a fair amount can be done for it. This is the kind of research that is important.
A psychosis research group in Trinity College has come up with valuable research on schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, what used to be called manic depression. It has done this by analysing the chromosomal structures and detecting particular characteristics in the brain. This is remarkable and will be of value to people who suffer from schizophrenia, a condition from which people all over the world suffer.
At our stage of life we all know people or friends who have died or had treatment for cancer. We have colleagues in this situation. A remarkable advance has been made in the understanding of the mechanism for cell suicide, the mechanism by which cells switch off and stop replicating. This has an implication for cancer patients, because cancer cells go the other way and go mad replicating. This will be very useful research.
I could go on about the removal of various grants in the VEC sector, but the Minister knows all about that. The removal of the book grant is serious because it hits the poorest. I urge the Minister to reconsider that.
I am aware Senator Ross made a passionate plea for Church of Ireland schools. Although I am expected to do the same, I will take a different direction. I would love to see my ethos continue. I go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral every Sunday and I hope people continue to do that, but I do not believe a religious ethos should be passed on through the schools. A religious ethos is for parents to pass on to their children. Schools are for facts.
Senator Fidelma Healy Eames: They are for education.
Senator David Norris: Yes, for education. I would like to refer to the review by the UN Human Rights Committee which looked at this situation and said the integrated curriculum, or ethos, is discrimination: “The committee notes with concern that the vast majority of Ireland’s primary schools are privately run denominational schools that have adopted a religious integrated curriculum thus depriving many parents and children who so wish to have access to secular primary education.” I have read a long, scholarly legal article about how difficult it is to amend this situation without some kind of constitutional review.
I want to retain my little denomination, and the Roman Catholic Church and Jewish and Islamic religions. It really glorifies life that we have this richness and diversity. Therefore, I am not against denominational education. However, artificially propping up these things through schools, where sometimes the teachers do not believe in anything, disillusions the children. Let them go to church if their parents want them to have religious education and let the churches give it to them. Let the schools off the hook. We have preached this attitude for years to the people of Northern Ireland, where we said separate or segregated education was part of the problem. Why do we not address it here?
I have had correspondence from parents who are secular. I think they are atheists, but I am not certain of that. Those parents want a particular kind of education for their children but cannot get it. They are being forced to send their children to religious schools. They were horrified at Christmas when the children came home, after the parents had been promised by the school they would not receive religious education, singing Christmas carols. While I would not lose much sleep over that, it was deemed offensive by those parents. They found it impossible to get any context which was not religious. This is something we need to look at.
In this context, I want the Minister to take back one message to his colleagues in Cabinet. I want them to look at the situation involving the Ferns and Cloyne reports and ask themselves who are the worst equipped people to be given absolute responsibility over children. There was a systematic structural concealment of considerable levels of severe sexual child abuse and molestation, yet because of the way in which the equality legislation was drafted, all the churches — not singling out the Roman Catholic church — have an exemption from the operation of that legislation. This allows them, theoretically — I do not think they have done it yet or would have the gall to do it — to dismiss a teacher because of his or her sexual orientation, regardless of character. These are the people whose authority has been impugned because of their known, stated, recorded behaviour as in these reports. Despite this, their track record and the number of convictions, these people could say to somebody like me, “You are not fit to be a teacher.”
This was said in my regard, to the Provost, in a letter from a parent approximately 30 years ago. I was giving a series of lectures on European comic fiction in the English tradition. I explained to the class of final year students — grown up people — that it was impossible to understand the way in which the novelist E. M. Forster dealt with character, plot, situation etc. unless one understood his ambiguous attitude towards his own sexuality. A parent wrote to the Provost saying I should be dismissed, not because I was a lousy teacher, but because I was a good teacher and might have an impact as a role model. I would hope so, because there was none for me. I was not changed by my teacher role models. As far as I know, my teachers were all heterosexual, but it did not rub off on me.
I urge the Minister to take this issue to Cabinet. He should ask Cabinet, in light of the objective evidence — not just the evidence of an old ranter like me — whether it is any longer appropriate that the church, which has shown such abandonment of its responsibility to children, should be allowed to be the only institution in the State that is not covered by equality legislation. I urge him to put this question to the Cabinet. Say, “That old nut-case, Norris, in the Seanad, was on about this” and ask it to look at the evidence.