Dangerous legal vacuum at the Irish universities

The peculiar phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ keeps coming up in reply to questions about the Irish universities both in the Dail (including questions from Joe Higgins) and as we've seen from civil servants. So they are responsibilities, but autonomous, so effectively not responsibilities; moreover this paradoxical state has been enshrined in statute.

The phrase does not occur at all in the 1997 act, and “independent” itself is NEVER used in this context but usually correctly refers to concerns about academic freedom. The section 25 referred to time and again by the “mandarins” bears no relation to autonomy, and in fact is precisely the section that DCU has been flagrantly in breach of since 1997. Far from being statutory, it is clear that a civil servant (originally Padraic Mellett of the HEA) invented this phrase to allow universities' management do whatever they wanted to staff, students and the taxpayer.

This stinks of “because we can” and only a few months ago the administration which made this its leitmotif and motto sank without trace. Finally, the repeated reference to "day to day' management of the universities is also a civil servant's fabrication, and bears no relation to the legislation. As it happens, that legislation allows the minister to SUSPEND governing authority on foot of a Visitor's report



Sean O Nuallain PhD, Ventura Hall, Stanford

21u Iuil, 2011

PS I just checked the web, and the only reference to the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities" other than references as answers to questions in the Dail about the Irish universities is in a murder inquiry in Bradford

Sturart Neilson's similar experiences can be found at

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78472?comment_order=asc&condense_comments=false&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true



PPS One can abdicate a responsibility; delegate a responsibility, or live up to a responsibility. In all these cases, there is the clear implication of accountability (the necessity to answer to a higher authority) once responsibility is in play, so it is by definition not “autonomous”. On the other hand, delegating “autonomous responsibilities “ - if it means anything at all - is surely equivalent to assigning complete discretion, complete freedom of action. So what successive administrations have been doing in answering a range of questions about clear violations of civil and criminal codes with the phrase “autonomous statutory responsibilities “ is saying that the universities are outside the remit of any statutory control.

Of course, none of that is suggested in the 1997 act, which clearly gives an oversight role to the minister. The civil servants who drafted those answers (starting with Ronnie Ryan) should be investigated, prosecuted, and sacked if it turns out that clear criminality ensued – and in my experience it indeed did ensue.