Sir, - The amended Bill indicates that NUI may not be granted a standing visitorial board or visitor (TCD may continue to have its standing combination of inspector and ombudsman). The NUI Senate, and presumably all college governing bodies, had not sought a standing or permanent visitor, so the Minister could claim that "the universities" did not want one.
Nevertheless, Convocation, the Irish Federation of University Teachers, the Union of Students of Ireland and the UCD Committee on Internal Structures, chaired. by ex President Patrick Hillery, have all advocated a standing visitor. Ironically, if the Bill's thankfully more representative governing bodies were already in place, these too would probably back the standing visitor.
University law now has a standard textbook. Modern labour legislation cannot replace a visitor for defective or misapplied statues, ordinances, student problems, etc. (Examinations appeals boards already exist). Because of the ad hoc nature of the current NUI visitorial provision, conflict raged for years in the UCC of the 1930s and the UCD of the 1950s, before governments chose to send in a visitor. Presidents are powerful. The Bill appears to deal with them by mass dismissal of a governing body!
QUB, with its visitorial board of senior lawyers, two men and two women, seems pleased, like TCD, with its speedily and relatively inexpensively operating standing visitorial board.
I have personally pleaded with the Minister for statutory branches of Convocation for the constituent universities. After all, their Government bodies are to have graduate panels, presumably for feed back opinion. - Yours, etc.,
Professor Emeritus and
Chairman of Convocation,
NUI,
49 Merrion Square,
Dublin 2.