The foresight of British minister Augustine Birrell in setting up the NUI 100 years ago should be acknowledged, writes STEPHEN COLLINS
THIS MONTH marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most important landmarks in the development of Irish education:
the passage through the UK parliament of the National University of Ireland Bill. The legislation put university education in Ireland on a solid foundation that was to prove vitally important for the country's development during the 20th century.
Since its creation, most of the senior political figures in this State and almost all senior public servants have graduated from one or other of the NUI colleges. At a tree-planting ceremony in Merrion Square last month to mark the centenary, the chancellor of the NUI and former taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, pointed out to the current Taoiseach and NUI graduate Brian Cowen that 12 of the 15 members of the present Cabinet are graduates of the university.
The creation of the NUI was the greatest achievement of Augustine Birrell, the cabinet minister most sympathetic to the Irish cause ever sent by a British government to administer in this country. Mainly remembered now as the politician whose softly, softly approach allowed the 1916 Rising to take place, Birrell deserves to be remembered for his achievements and for his affection for Ireland and her people.
On his arrival, Birrell fondly imagined that he would go down in history as the last Irish secretary since the Act of Union. He saw his role as presiding over the transfer of power from Westminster to a Home Rule government in Dublin. In his old age he confessed that he never contemplated the possibility of what actually happened. "The 'course of events' that makes puppets of politicians is responsible for that," he mused.
When Birrell was appointed chief secretary in February 1907, the university question appeared to be an intractable political issue. It had dogged Irish politics for decades, with the Catholic hierarchy opposing secular third-level education as "godless colleges", and the Protestant establishment concerned only to preserve the pre-eminence of Trinity College and the independence of Queen's University.
Into this maelstrom strolled Birrell, an urbane Liberal politician and agnostic from a Protestant non-conformist background. Birrell's determined approach to the complex issue may be relevant to today's politicians. Announcing his scheme to the Commons, he promised to either get it through or resign.
He met all the interested parties and charmed and cajoled them into accepting his solution, which was basically to leave Trinity alone, confirm the independence of Queen's and to establish the NUI with three constituent colleges at Dublin, Cork and Galway, with Maynooth becoming an affiliated college.
He recalled later how most of his Irish nationalist friends at Westminster warned him to beware of Cardinal Logue of Armagh, whom they described as "a cunning little Irish peasant". Undaunted, Birrell sold his plan to the sceptical cardinal, remarking: "Cunning he may have been, all peasants are supposed to be cunning - and if they are not what would become of them?"
The open-minded attitude that enabled him to get his university scheme through the minefield of sectarian politics reflected his generous approach to Irish issues. The reforming Liberal government of which he was a member introduced the People's Budget of 1908 and the old-age pension. With Irish birth records going back only as far as 1864, there was a flood of unsupported applications for the pension. Birrell was besieged as the ultimate arbiter on the issue and he applied a generous leeway in approving supplicants.
He recalled later how Conservative opponents in parliament had warned that the state payment would take away from people's dignity. "That the pension increased enormously the stock of Irish happiness cannot be doubted and I feel sure it degraded nobody, unless indeed it is a degradation to be willing to persuade yourself that you are two years older than you have any reason to believe you are."
Birrell loved travelling around Ireland, particularly the west. "I used to think during my many western tours, an Irish parish in Connaught, supplied with a pious and sensible priest, a devoted and skilled "Dudley" nurse and a sober dispensary doctor, attained as nearly to Paradise as it is possible for any place on earth to get. But that complete combination was sometimes hard to find."
Some of his observations might be regarded as patronising, but were no less true for all that. The political leaders of the European Union, scratching their heads in 2008 wondering why an electorate that repeatedly declares itself in opinion polls to be committed to Europe voted down the Lisbon Treaty, would probably identify with Birrell's observation. "I soon discovered three things: one was that nothing in Ireland was explicable; another was that everything of unimportance was known; and the third was what a small country Ireland is."
In retirement he welcomed Ireland's independence but remarked in the 1920s on how the founders of the new state ignored the debt they owed to the great personal sacrifice made by members of the Irish Parliamentary Party. "Politicians seldom desire gratitude, and never get it," he concluded.
In 1929 he was deeply appreciative when the NUI offered to confer him with an honorary doctorate, along with the Irish head of government, WT Cosgrave, to mark the 100th anniversary of Catholic Emancipation. Typical of his luck, however, December storms in the Irish Sea prevented Birrell making the crossing and he had to receive his degree in absentia. Shortly before he died in 1933 at the age of 84, he told a friend: "I often in my dreams visit Connemara and the mountains of Kerry but never either the Castle or the Lodge. I should like to see Achill Sound again, but I do not suppose I ever shall."
It is timely in the centenary year of the NUI to lift Augustine Birrell's memory out of the great dust-heap of history and acknowledge the benign part he played in moulding modern Ireland.