Sir, - Decimation of any UK or Irish university's full-time academic staff can have international repercussions.
Seemingly no QUB convocation meeting - extraordinary, general or otherwise - has yet been convened to debate the issue raised in your columns. QUB and NUI convocations are authorities (sic), whose prescribed roles include (1) examination of any significant university problem and (2) election of a substantial fraction of the top academic executive body. Queen's convocation did not lack vitality in recent years, to judge by dramatic meetings on, for example, discrimination. This makes the present silence all the more deafening.
Has no graduate appealed to the Visitor (the British Crown) to act through hearings before its visitorial board (composed, I believe, of distinguished lawyers, four in number because gender-balanced)?
What about a university ombudsman? A single ombudsman, appointed exclusively by a university, could, I submit, conflict with the spirit of the QUB and NUI founding charters and with the principle of internal autonomy, a thesis eloquently developed by Prof Joe Lee in the last stage of the recent Bill debated in Seanad Eireann in respect of notably NUI's future.
Transparency, equity and quality assurance entitle graduates and staff to know what criteria are applied to redundancy recommendations. Were the same criteria applied to all QUB faculties? Were the research-inactive given advance warning in reasonable time? If one-fifth, say, of the students are postgraduate, much of a lecturer's teaching may be supervisory, thus necessarily research-productive. If the teaching workload is excessive, in terms, for example, of contact hours, research may be impossible. Were some QUB academics caught in this trap?
Events north and south of the Border now suggest that the Republic's present Government, in a manner consistent with the recent legislation and in accordance with pre-electoral Fianna Fail declarations, should establish as soon as possible a Visitorial Board for NUI academics and (as at TCD) for students. The QUB experience calls for general vigilance. - Yours, etc., Paul J. Cannon
(Professor Emeritus), Camowen, Marlborough Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin.