Picking up where I left off with yesterday’s post about the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Higher Education Policy Conference, Professor David Raffe, Director of the Centre for Educational Sociology in the University of Edinburgh spoke on “Higher education policies across the UK since devolution”, and his paper put the higher education policy issues into context. In particular, he demonstrates not only the challenges being faced by higher education at present but also the diversity of available policy responses even in the UK. I’m going to summarize those aspects of his paper which are relevant to Irish circumstances and leave to one side his application of those elements to devolution in the UK [my occasional comments about the Irish position are in parentheses], and I will use his paper to put the contribution of Dr Selina McCoy in context. Read the rest of this entry »

I attended the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Higher Education Policy Conference yesterday on the topic “Higher Education Policy: Evidence from Ireland and Europe”. In the first session, Dr Selina McCoy of the ESRI spoke on “Higher education research in Ireland: where are we now?” and Muiris O’Connor of the Higher Education (HEA) spoke on “Higher education policy in Ireland: achievements and challenges”. In the second session, Professor David Raffe, Director of the Centre for Educational Sociology in the University of Edinburgh spoke on “Higher education policies across the UK since devolution” and Research Professor Liv Anne Støren of the Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Oslo spoke on “New trends in higher education in Norway – Are traditional male students ousted by female working class students and immigrant students?”. It was a fascinating series of presentations. Muiris O’Connor’s paper was an excellent survey of the evolution and present state of the Irish higher education sector. David Raffe’s paper put the higher education policy issues into context. Selina McCoy examined the very important specific issue of access to higher education in Ireland, whilst Live Anne Støren provided a comparative perspective on that issue. In this post, I’ll summarize what Muiris O’Connor had to say, and I’ll return to the other presentations tomorrow.

For Muiris O’Connor, the main achievement in Irish higher education policy is the participation rate. Over the last 50 years or so, after a late start – the free second level education scheme was introduced in 1967, about 25 years after the rest of Europe – there has been a rapid expansion of the third level sector and a rapid catch-up to international levels. Ireland is above the OECD average for 25-34 year-olds’ educational attainment in second and third level education. Although Ireland is not quite at OECD levels for PhDs, policy in recent years has been to boost that figure. On the other hand, Ireland is a long way from the OECD average for life-long learning rates. Moreover inequalities at the point of entry to higher education are still severe; in particular, there is a serious drop in participation by those just above the grant eligibility threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

This is how Fennelly J began his judgment for the Supreme Court in Central Applications Office v Minister for Community Rural and Galeltacht Affairs [2010] IESC 32 (13 May 2010). The Court granted a declaration that respondent Minister did not have the power under the Official Languages Act, 2003 (also here) to designate the applicant as a public body subject to obligations imposed by the Act concerning the conduct of its affairs in both official languages. The CAO today publishes its second round of offers of third level places for the forthcoming academic year, and in the inauspicious technical landscape of a Supreme Court appeal, Fennelly J provided an excellent primer on the operations of the Central Applications Office (the CAO; logo, above left):

is a company limited by guarantee and is a non-profit body. It was formed in 1976 and is based in Galway. … The State has no responsibility for its operation. The members of the CAO are the third-level institutions which it serves. Prior to the establishment of the CAO in 1976, there was no centralised system for processing applications from students seeking admission to third level. … The universities … decided to form a single body to process applications. The CAO now has 44 participant Higher Education Institutions …

The process by which the CAO matches applications (from students) and offers (from institutions) is as follows. Each student makes a single application to the CAO early in the year. The student specifies, in order of preference, the preferred colleges and courses of study. Each institution decides on the number of places it will offer in each category and informs the CAO. The CAO relates the student’s application with [that student's] Leaving Certificate results. It then makes an offer to the student on a form described as “offer notice” which specifies the course being offered and the institution offering it. It invites the student to return a part of the form specifying acceptance. …

This is a far more elegant explanation than the one I essayed in an earlier post, in which I went on to explain that grades of the last-admitted candidate to a course can be regarded as the cut-off for qualification for entry to that course, and that these grades can be expressed as a function of points in a range from 0 to 600. In that earlier post, I set out the points levels for entry into various law courses on the basis of the CAO’s first round of offers.

Each year, not all of the CAO’s offers are accepted, with the result that some courses have vacancies. The third level institutions notify the CAO of the vacancies, and it issues a further round of offers. Where the points of the last-admitted candidate on this round are lower than those of the last-admitted candidate in the first round, the CAO also publishes the revised points cut-off. This year, the second round of offers of places was made today, and the points requirements for some law courses were revised accordingly. (Of course, some of these offers will not be accepted, and the third level institutions and the CAO will continue to make further offers as necessary to fill their courses).

In the table below (after the jump), I set out the final points requirements for law degrees in the various third level institutions. The first number, in bold font, is the final points requirement. Where the points were revised in round 2, the points for round 1 are then set out in regular font, prefaced by “R1:”. Finally, for the sake of completeness, where the course was offered last year, the final points for 2009 are set out in italics in parentheses. Read the rest of this entry »

Many things about Ireland bemuse visitors to our shores. Two of the most difficult to explain are our electoral system and the programme by which third level places are allocated. I’ll leave the former to other election anoraks for the time being, but the latter is much in the news this week, so I’ll try to give a simple account of how it works.

The Central Applications Office (logo, above left) processes all applications to first year undergraduate courses in the country’s various third level institutions. In early summer, students at the end of their secondary (high) school careers sit a state examination, and the results are published in early August. During the course of that final year, most of the students will have filled in a list of their preferred third level courses and returned it to the CAO. In mid-August, the CAO assign university places to students based on their exam results.

Allocation of places is simply a function of demand and supply. A third level institution will inform the CAO of the number of places in a given course, and the CAO’s computer will allot places on the course to the highest qualified applicants who had applied for that course. The grades of the last-admitted candidate can be regarded as the cut-off for qualification for entry to that course.

In the final state exam, each letter grade is assigned a level of points (eg, an A1 is worth 100 points, a C3 is worth 60 points, etc). The CAO takes each candidate’s best 6 grades to calculate the points total of each candidate (eg, a candidate who got six A1s is will have 600 points, a candidate who got six C3s will have 360 points, etc). Hence, the grades of the last-admitted candidate on a course can be represented in terms of these points, and the entry requirement for any given third-level course in any given year can be represented in terms of points.

Scaled up across every applicant for every third-level course, it is clear that the CAO system is a significant undertaking. This year, the first round of offers of places in third level institutions was made yesterday, and the cut-off points levels for their various law degree offerings are below the jump. (Update: I’ve blogged about the second round final points here). Read the rest of this entry »

May 2010 is the ICCL’s Know Your Rights Month! The ICCL’s Know Your Rights public information project is designed to inform people in clear and accessible language about their rights under various key areas of the law in Ireland. There are two key projects. The first is a series of information packs covering key human rights areas: Criminal Justice and Garda Powers, Privacy and the European Convention on Human Rights. They are written in plain English, and will be updated regularly as the law changes, providing accessible and accurate information. As well as being available for download free of charge, they are also being distributed to libraries and citizens’ information centres nationwide.

The second key project is a series of roadshows to raise awareness of human rights and to help those giving advice on foot of the ICCL information packs. The first of these roadshow events will take place on Wednesday 19 May 2010, from 2:00pm to 4:00pm in the Community and Social Enterprise Centre, 8 North Mall, Cork. Those interested should contact the ICCL’s Joanne Garvey to reserve a place.

I am particularly impressed by the privacy pack, covering the following areas:

• Closed Circuit TV (CCTV)
• Consumer affairs
• Data protection
• Educational institutions
• Foreign nationals and asylum seekers
• Gardaí
• General information
• Government departments and agencies
• Internet
• Key words
• Media
• Privacy at work
• Surveillance
• Useful Contacts

This morning’s Today with Pat Kenny radio show on RTÉ Radio 1 featured a slot on protecting privacy which discussed the ICCL Know Your Rights campaign in general and the privacy pack in particular. The issue were explored by Gary Davis, Deputy Data Protection Commissioner and TJ McIntyre of the UCD School of Law and head of Digital Rights Ireland. The item can be streamed or podcast from the webpage for today’s show. It’s well worth a listen, and the ICCL’s packs are well worth consulting. Kudos to them for such an important job so well done.

Update: there is a super post, with more history, over on Human Rights in Ireland.

At the Irish Jurisprudence Society (IJS) Symposium, the fifth paper is being delivered by Thomas Patrick Murray (UCD) on The Politics of Property and Principle: Economic Rights in the Drafting of the Irish Free State Constitution. It is a fascinating use of archival material to underpin a theoretical discussion of the deliberations of the committee drafting the IFS constitution concerning the possibilities of constitutional engineering to create economic constraints and guarantees. In particular, he compares various drafts of various committee members on various issues, and locates their perspectives in their life experiences, religious convictions, and political beliefs. His conclusion is that an initial radical draft of socio-economic rights fell foul of external vested interests and the belief-systems of the majority of the committee.

Murray shows that it is clear from the archives and memoirs that, at the outset, the drafting committee paid significant attention to the economic foundations of the emerging Free State. Although economic freedom was to be secured in the first instance through formal democratic mechanisms, the framers also canvassed a number of binding economic provisions for inclusion. In particular, their focus was upon the principle of economic sovereignty, concerning land (especially farm land) and other natural resources (especially for energy generation) and the right to free elementary education.

Murray the demonstrates that the committee’s sphere of action was quite bounded and indeed subject to influence from outside interests. The main interest of the provisional government was in maintaining social and political order and avoiding controversy. Countervailing economic interests featured too, especially the opposition of the farming lobby to any re-distribution of land. Moreover, the Catholic Church was unhappy with the socio-economic rights proposals, especially the provisions relating to education. The committee therefore kept the constitutional text to the bare minimum to ensure its success; controversial provisions were carefully curtailed; and established interests were assuaged. Murray concluded on this point, then, that, faced with the need to establish the legitimacy of the state, any innovation that might threaten established property-holders or any moral principle that might deny a hierarchical role for the Church was deemed ‘controversial’ and accordingly postponed.

But Muarry goes further. He argues that the members were not only constrained by various social boundaries, they were also necessarily constrained by their own boundaries of thought. In other words, various features of the prevailing discourse facilitated the diminution of the committee’s initial economic provisions. Most members of the committee were in thrall to the assertive Catholic-Nationalist ethos of early twentieth-century Dublin, and this prevailing ‘Irish Ireland’ discourse imposed significant limitations on the possibilities of embedding socio-economic rights in the constitution. Although those few members of the committee from outside of this political culture appear to have been more open to the lived experience of poverty and were more amenable to the substantive promotion of economic rights, their views did not prevail against the established discourse. Murray concluded on this point, then, that the pursuit of ‘Irish Ireland’ amounted to something very like an official othodoxy. Conversely, egalitarian discourses, envisioning a society based on principles of rational-legal equality and interdependent citizenship, came to be suppressed. Consequently, the committee’s initial economic rights proposals greatly watered down; prevailing ‘Irish Ireland’ discuorse meant this was not seen as wrong.

At the Irish Jurisprudence Society (IJS) Symposium on Jurisprudence and Legal Theory at University College Cork, the first paper was delivered by Dr Shane Kilcommins (UCC), who spoke about The Security State and Constitutional Justice: the dangers of ignoring a ‘rights-based conception of the Rule of Law’ that ensures that ‘the majority cannot travel as fast or as far as it would like’. His paper traced the present history of penology from Michel Foucault to David Garland. Garland’s work sees the present as a time of the decline of the rehabilitative ideal, the (re)emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice, focus on the perspective of the victim, protection by (rather than from) the state, and the (re)emergence of the prison. In many ways, Irish criminologists can point to a similar development in Ireland: the ‘tooling up’ of the executive power of the state thanks to a hyperactive legislature wanting to be seen to be tough on crime.

Kilcommins’ key point however, is that we must not overstate this development, we must not be misled by the uniqueness of the present. He cites Michel Foucault: “we should have the modesty to say to ourselves that the time we live in is not the unique or fundamental or irruptive point in history where everything is completed and begun again”. Hence, in Kilcommins’ view, Ireland in the early 21st century doesn’t quite fit the Garland narrative; the position is much more nuanced and contradictory, with strong pulls in the opposite direction. For him, the Irish criminal justice is becoming more disaggregated and more contradictory. It is more principled but also more repressive, more instrumental but also more expressive. It continues to emphasise protection from the State, but increasingly also protection by the State. It embodies more authoritarianism but also more pluralism. It involves more monopolised criminal control but also more fragmentation and blurring of boundaries. In particular, for him, whilst legislation is more control-based along Garland lines, the courts are operating as a check on these developments:

The liberal ideology of legalism and constitutionalism has delivered, and continues to deliver, significant protections to those accused of crime that set some limits to the power of the State and the ‘tyranny of the majority’. Though discounted in crime control literature, it has a power and a reach that remains significant and real. Its embedded nature offers more than token resistance to newly emerging, more control orientated, orthodoxies. To dismiss it, or to afford it epiphenomenal status only (as ‘law in books’ or ‘paper rules’), is to neglect its capacity to check power and to offer sustained and dogged opposition to the creation of a ‘culture of control’ society.

Referring to Ronald Dworkin, he argued that the judiciary is by and large constrained by gravitational force of earlier decisions, so that the implementation of crime control legislation runs into a conflicting narrative of rights-based discourse. However, Kilcommins is realistic about the extent of this counter: it is not a complete response, and it is too easy to make complacent assumptions about the unity of law. Nevertheless, he concluded that we should still not close ourselves off from the continued appeal of constitutionalism, legalism, human rights, the internal logic of law, and judicial craft, all of which remain strongly imbricated in the cross-currents of the Irish criminal justice system.

Part 5 of the Defamation Act, 2009 (also here), which came into effect on 1 January this year, controversially makes blasphemy a criminal offence. In the view of the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, the Constitution’s reference to blasphemy could not be ignored. It now seems that this reference might be removed. If so, the opportunity should be taken to revise the Constitution’s free speech clause in its entirety.

Stephen O’Brien reported in the Sunday Times last week that the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, intends to propose an Autumn referendum to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution (athiest.ie | Attracta | Dispatches | Guardian | Human Rights in Ireland | Human Rights World | Jurist | Bill Tormey | Volokh | William Quill). This was confirmed on Wednesday by Carol Coulter writing in the Irish Times (ABC | Catholic Lawyers | Iona | Sunday Times).

I have long argued that the protection of freedom of expression in the Irish Constitution is very puny indeed and ought to be replaced at the first opportunity. I argue in today’s Irish Times that a referendum to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution would provide just that opportunity:

Referendum on blasphemy should revise free speech clause

The promised referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Constitution should go further, and entirely revamp the very limited guarantee of freedom of expression … Deleting one objectionable word, rather than thoroughly revising the whole gruesome clause, would be equivalent to repairing a single broken slate on the roof of a house which needs complete refurbishment. … The freedom of expression guarantee in the Irish Constitution is an example of the wrong way to protect free speech. The forthcoming referendum should replace it with something far better suited to the needs of a modern constitutional democracy.

The full text of a possible alternative is available here. The cases referred to in the piece are:

• Murphy v Independent Radio and Television Commissions [1999] 1 IR 26; [1998] 2 ILRM 360 (Supreme Court held that free speech is fundamental both for personal development and as a foundation of democracy);
• Corway v Independent Newspapers 1999] 4 IR 485; [2000] 1 ILRM 426; [1999] IESC 5 (30 July 1999) (Supreme Court held that the common law crime of blasphemous libel was too uncertain to give content to the constitutional crime);
• Mahon v Post Publications [2007] 3 IR 338; [2007] 2 ILRM 1; [2007] IESC 15 (29 March 2007) (Supreme Court asserted that the right of a free press to communicate information without let or restraint is intrinsic to a free and democratic society); and
• Dillon v DPP [2007] IEHC 480 (4 December 2007) (High Court held that section 3 of the Vagrancy (Ireland) Act 1847 infringed constitutional protections of speech).