Sir, - In her interesting article on the election of a new Provost of TCD (EL, February 27th) Yvonne Healy quotes "one TCD professor" on the subject of the TCD Private Act. The professor says that the outgoing provost "has maintained the special status of Trinity [via the TCD Act]".
The professor should read the Act. It surrenders the autonomy of the college and cannot therefore be claimed to maintain it. The Act means that Ireland now has no autonomous university and is unlikely to have even one in the foreseeable future. A principled stand by TCD to defend its autonomy, as in 1911 and 1920, should have been the catalyst for an entirely autonomous university sector in Ireland as part of a pluralist and liberal society.
The second problem with the TCD Act is that its promoters moved every single goalpost in the passage of private legislation in this country, as a reading of the five volumes of evidence of the Oireachtas committee will confirm. In TCD the ballot papers were opened more than a week before the close of the ballot. Non-supporters of the Bill were sent emails by those conducting the ballot using information improperly obtained.
The college informed the Oireachtas a week before the close of balloting that the Bill had majority support and at the same time informed non-supporters of the Bill that support was well short of an overall majority assenting. The Bill was lodged in Leinster House on the day the Visitors of the College (the Chancellor and a judge of the Supreme Court), were due to examine the above matters and in advance of any verdict by them.
Both ballots failed to obtain the 75 per cent majority required under the rules for private bills based on the Companies Acts. The 75 per cent rule was waived by a phone call from the promoters of the Bill without any right of appeal by the petitioner against the Bill or any reason being given. The severely amended Bill failed to meet the time limit set for it by the Universities Act by several months, but this too was waived.
The facts concerning the TCD Private Act, stated under oath, are on the Oireachtas record. The college response has been to accuse its critics of intemperate language and to attempt to rewrite history.
The autonomy of TCD was ended by the Private Act. It was an ignoble episode in pursuit of an unworthy goal. - Yours, etc.,
Sean D. Barrett, FTCD, Trinity College, Dublin 2.