A DRAMATIC intervention by the Provost of Trinity College led to an eleventh hour amendment of the Universities Bill in the Seanad.
Nearing the end of a marathon debate on the measure, the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, moved an amendment on the composition of academic councils which control the content and presentation of university teaching programmes.
TCD has a council of approximately 30 members.
The ministerial amendment had just been moved when the Dublin University senator Mr David Norris said that moments earlier he had been informed that the Provost, Dr Tom Mitchell, was objecting strongly to what was being proposed.
The Government Leader in the House, Mr Maurice Manning, suggested that there be a brief recess, saying that an important matter had been raised.
Dr Mary Henry (Ind) said she had also spoken to the Provost and the difficulty was that the Minister's proposal could result in more than 80 people being able to sit on the council. The Minister would appreciate what problems that could cause.
Prof Joe Lee (Ind) expressed the hope that a phraseology could be arrived at which would allow TCD to have whatever it wanted, while at the same time not impinging on decisions regarding the requirements of other third level institutions.
When the sitting resumed, Ms Breathnach moved a new amendment enabling TCD to retain its council structure.
Welcoming the change, Mr Norris said that he and his colleagues had achieved it by the skin of their teeth. Where matters of such seriousness were being considered in future, it would be good, he felt, for TCD to have a college officer present in the Seanad environs to act in a liaison capacity.
Following the passage of the Bill. which now returns to the Dail for final consideration, Mr Shane Ross (Dublin University) complained bitterly that it represented a fundamentally retrograde step.
He did not accept that it had necessarily been improved during its passage so far through the Oireachtas. It was an inherently bad Bill because the principle behind it was that the State should take more control of third level education. That had been achieved.
The only reason the Bill's proponents had not got their way as far as they wanted to was because of the Government's minority position in the Seanad, said Mr Ross, who recently resigned the Fine Gael whip.
The independence of universities had been diminished, he complained. These institutions had settled for this Bill partly because they were worried that they might get a worse package in future.
"The threat to academic freedom is here, the threat of ministerial control is real, the threat of political appointments to boards is there and the threat of political control is now a reality in university life."
Taking issue with Mr Ross's comments, Mr Manning said his former party colleague claimed to occupy the high moral ground. Supporters of the Bill, just like Mr Ross, were committed to principle.
Mr Ross had spoken of this being a question of the State taking over the universities, but the reality was that under the Bill the State would have less control and it had given back to the universities a great deal more power to manage their own affairs. The idea of party control of universities was ludicrous.
He believed Mr Ross was caught in a time warp. He was thinking of universities as they operated in the 1920s, Mr Manning said.