Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come in briefly. What the Minister of State said sounds counterintuitive. He said that mentioning parity of esteem will not guarantee it but we need to reinforce it. It reminds me of a scene in "The Simpsons" where Homer asks Lisa what she is going to study in university and she tells him she is going to study philosophy. Homer tells her that is great because it will mean she can get a job in the big philosophy factory on the edge of town. Even in popular culture and cartoons, there is an acknowledgement of the kind of status hierarchy of knowledge, which is completely false and bogus. We have an opportunity to intervene to ensure there is an absolute guarantee.

I was struck by what Senator Higgins has said. She said she hopes it will not be only €1 million for the arts, with the rest of the budget going to our engineering and astrophysicist friends. We must ensure that at least a minimum of the funding is ring-fenced for meaningful research into the human sciences and arts. I see in the senior leadership teams in our universities an over-representation of decision-makers from a natural sciences background. There is a feeling that people who have qualifications and a research track record in those areas are somehow more authoritative or carry more intellectual weight, which is completely false. I have experience of being in a university where the president is an engineer, which is great, but I would prefer to be led by a poet and let the engineers do the servicing. I think we would have a better society for it. I want to press the point that there should be more explicit guarantees of parity of esteem in the Bill.