Sir, - My recent defence of the autonomy of TCD has been opposed in your columns, including by some SIPTU members. The Universities Bill does not allow a single autonomous college in the State. The government has yet to say why it finds autonomous colleges intolerable, and the matter will be fully debated when it belatedly makes that case.
In regard to the matters raised by your correspondents, it is not correct to state that TCD's autonomy has led to autocracy. TCD's statutes ensure that it is collegiate and participatory in its structures. By contrast, the Universities Bill is a centralising authoritarian measure which promotes bureaucracy.
If the Government were to abolish trade union membership fees or newspaper prices, and impose its representatives on the governing bodies of trade unions or publications, the measure would be rightly opposed. Colleges, like newspapers and trade unions, are independent sources of ideas and debate in a democracy not arms of government.
Against all economic and social advice, the Government abolished undergraduates fees rather than reform the grants paid directly to students. It compounds this error in maintaining that it is entitled to appoint board members to organisations whose income it abolishes.
I am surprised that any trade union members would support the draconian industrial relations measures in sections 15, 18, 22, 27 and 28 of the Universities Bill and would urge other trade unionists to examine these aspects in detail. - Yours, etc.
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.