THE DISSOLUTION of the National University of Ireland (NUI) was not primarily financial and would generate net savings in the region of €1 million, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dick Roche told the Dáil.

“Rather, it is a matter of being unable to support the continuation of NUI to carry out its remaining functions, the bulk of which will now most likely be performed by the constituent universities themselves,” he said.

Mr Roche, speaking on behalf of Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe, said he had concluded that having a separate institution making awards for a small and reducing number of recognised colleges, and to deliver certain shared services for some of the universities, was neither strategic nor sustainable.

“It is in this context that the Government has decided to dissolve the NUI,” said Mr Roche. “There is no need to delay while the higher education strategy is being finalised.” The NUI brand, he said, enjoyed respect and recognition domestically and globally, and the awards made by constituent universities were entitled awards and would continue to be so.

The Minister, he added, was open to discussing with the constituent universities an appropriate mechanism to ensure the protection of the integrity and international reputation of the NUI degree.

Mr Roche said that the provision for dissolution would be made in the legislation amalgamating the qualifications and quality assurance bodies.

It had been sent for drafting, and it was hoped to publish it in the early summer, he added.

Mr Roche said there would be a code of practice and quality mark for the provision of educational services to international students.

Additional measures would apply to providers of English language courses.

On the NUI’s role in the election of members to the Seanad, Mr Roche said that Mr O’Keeffe would work closely with Minister for the Environment John Gormley in the context of wider plans for Seanad reform.

Mr Roche was replying, on the adjournment, to Labour education spokesman Ruairí Quinn, who claimed that the announcement of its abolition had been “instant and rather unilateral”.

It had been made on Wednesday , “at three minutes to midnight, in terms of the consultation process’’, with the NUI chancellor and registrar summoned to meet the Minister for Education, he said. “Many of the people in some of our key universities had no knowledge in advance that this was likely to happen,” he added.

Mr Quinn said that if Ireland wanted to become a knowledge economy, dismantling the NUI brand was not the way to go.

The Department of Education, he added, had already caused damage by scaling down the marketing efforts associated with promoting Ireland as a centre of international educational excellence.

Earlier, on the Order of Business, Labour’s Michael D Higgins said it was outrageous that the Minister for Education would turn his back on the Dáil and damage the NUI degree brand globally.

Some university presidents felt that they should be chief executives, he added. “One of them might have the ear of the Minister more than the graduates of the NUI,” said Mr Higgins.

“It is one thing for us to be producing tens of thousands of unemployed graduates; it is another for the Minister for Education to announce he proposes to devalue their degrees without coming to parliament.” Mr Higgins said it was “an ignorant action taken by stealth and without the courage to discuss it with the universities or in this House”. He said the Minister should make the case for his “windy proposal”.