Sir, – The recent decision by the Equality Tribunal to recommend promotion of a NUIG academic Dr Sheehy Skeffington and to award damages to her in the context of what they described as a “ramschackle” promotion process (“NUI Galway ordered to promote lecturer overlooked over gender”, November 18th) raises questions about the role of the Higher Educational Authority (HEA).
It has responsibilities under the Universities Act (1997) to promote gender balance.
It also has responsibilities to return figures to the EU to enable the strength of the “glass ceiling” in public universities to be compared.
In that context, the very least one would expect is that the HEA would publish academic staff data broken down by gender and level for each of the seven Irish public universities.
After failing to do this from 2004-2012, it did so in January 2013. However the annual report in 2014 again omitted this.
What gets measured gets done. – Yours, etc, PAT O’CONNOR Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Limerick.