THE Universities Bill imposes on colleges coercive restrictions which are unnecessary and inappropriate, according to the Senate of the National University of Ireland.
Existing procedures provide adequate financial transparency and reassurance that public money is being used efficiently, the NUI Senate says in its response to the legislation.
The NUI has proposed 18 substantive amendments to the Bill, which the Minister for Education introduced in the Dail yesterday. The response also suggests a number of technical and textual amendments to the legislation.
Under the proposals in the Bill, the Higher Education Authority would assume ultimate control of the number and grades of university staff, the response states. It says the proposed guidelines from the HEA on the proportion of spending to be devoted to different activities in the colleges would be "virtually mandatory".
A further provision could be used to deny a university an independent source of income from fees and other charges, it is claimed. "These restrictions would intrude"excessively on the legitimate freedom of universities to manage their affairs within allotted budgets," the submission says.
The success of the NUI colleges - UCD, UCC, UCG and Maynooth - could not be viewed in isolation from the structures under which they had operated for many generations, "structures which are conducive not to complacency but to free inquiry, self motivation, constant innovation, and a self critical approach".
Meanwhile, the UCG president, Dr Patrick Fottrell, has said the controversial legislation would subject universities to the same controls as are applied to semi state bodies.
Speaking at a conferring ceremony in Galway yesterday, Dr Fottrell said that to continue their educational mission, Irish universities must be allowed to regulate their own affairs in academic and management fields based on their own independent ethos.
"For the first time in the historical relationship between the university and the State, a set of controls would be introduced by the State and its agencies on nearly every aspect of the university's operations," he added.
