Papers of James Meenan – Move of UCD to Belfield

12 U.C.D. and the Future

Mr. de Valera said that the accommodation needs of the colleges were such now that he was afraid that to think of reviving any such project would mean further delay. His view had been that if they took the Parliament buildings to another site, they could make room there for the necessary extension of the cultural institiutions.

'In fifty years time,' he added, 'I hope the National University will have a suitable home in Leinster House.'"

We do not agree that the dream is impossible. Given that the Government is willing to spend sums of the order of those recommended by the Commission and that, if these, some millions are in fact to be spent on acquiring new premises for Government use, we submit that the general reshuffling of buildings and sites that is to take place in any event can be made in such a way as to keep U.C.D. in the central area. We note that despite Mr. de Valera's doubts about the possibilities in the immediate future, he nonetheless feels that within fifty years (and that is the foreseeable future for the younger generation) the House of the Oireachtas may have to depart from Merrion Street. And if they must depart, so will many of the Government departments. There will be little point in then handing over the Merrion Street area to the N.U.I. for purely administrative and ceremonial functions.

We maintain that incalculable damage will be done by not reviving the scheme now. We cannot believe that U.C.D., or any group, would be so shortsighted as to hinder the development of the logical plan - which would ultimately redound to the lasting benefit not only of the College, but of our whole cultural and educational future.

The consideration of such a long-term plan need not at all delay the relief of the overcrowded conditions under which the College labours. As we indicate later in Sections IV- VI, the sites at present held by the College are sufficient for all the present needs as estimated by the Commission and in addition we believe that adjacent sites could also be acquired, and that these would be sufficient for the estimated future 20% expansion.

It is not yet too late for the great ideal as expressed in Mr. de Valera's speech to be realised. But it is the eleventh hour. Once large-scale building operations for U.C.D. are commenced on the Stillorgan site, the opportunity may be gone forever.

III. PROBLEM INVOLVED IN THE PROPOSED MOVE OF U.C.D.

A. THE EFFECTS ON THE VARIOUS FACULTIES

It is obvious that the proposed move of U.C.D. to the Stillorgan Road site will present problems, some of them serious to both staff and students. Even if, and when, halls of residence are built there to house all the students from outside Dublin, 37% (the 1953 - 54 figure) of the students will have their homes in Dublin. Unless these students happen to live in the immediate vicinity, or near the Bray Road, attendance at the College would usually involve travelling to near the city centre and then out again if they rely on public transport. The same problems of inconvenience and waste of time will also face even the whole-time staff of the College to at least some extent.

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When detailed consideration is given to the effect of the move on the various faculties, particularly those which are essentially engaged in professional training, it will be seen that the problems are far greater than those outlined above.

Medicine

The effects of removal on students and the weakening of ties with the teaching hospitals and other medical schools, etc., will be dealt with in Section III B of this Memorandum. But the effects on the teaching staff which in many departments of the faculty is largely, if not entirely, parttime, and is also engaged in the professional practice of medicine, must be considered.

Apart from the staffs of the preclinical departments a high proportion of the professors and virtually all of the lecturers are part-time. Even some professors who are full-time are allowed a limited amount of private professional practice. The 'Clinical Tutors' are also full-time, but confine their activities to the hospitals and have no duties on the College premises.

The College Calendar lists a large number of these part-time teachers, the great majority of whom are clinical teachers at the recognised hospitals and do not attend at the College buildings. Approximately forty of them, however, do teach on the College premises and it will certainly prove inconvenient for these busy practitioners, who have both hospital duties and private consulting rooms in the city, often close to Earlsfort Terrace, to have to travel in and out to Stillorgan Road to give their one-hour lectures or demonstrations.

Architecture

All but one of the College staff in this faculty are part-time and engaged in professional practice. The students take a considerable part of their course in the first, second and fourth years at the College of Art in Kildare Street. Both students and staff make considerable use of the excellent library of the R.I.A.I. in Merrion Square, and will want to make frequent use of the Building Centre in Baggott Street. All of these important activities would be disrupted by a move to Stillorgan Road. Our views on architectural teaching in the city are outlined in Section III E of this Memorandum.

Law, Commerce, Economics

Here again the College has to rely almost entirely on part-time teachers from the professions. Barristers, bankers, accountants and similar part-time teachers from the professional and commercial world with heavy demands on their time obviously would find it more convenient to lecture at Earlsfort Terrace than at Stillorgan Road. Law students are compelled by the regulations of their profession to attend at the King's Inns or the Four Courts or the offices to which they are apprenticed, for lectures or other duties in addition to their attendance at the College. At present there is considerable difficulty in arranging suitable lecture hours for these students. Removal to Stillorgan Road would seem to necessitate the employment of full-time university teachers in these

14 U.C.D. and the Future

faculties and comprehensive changes in the regulations now governing the training of barristers and solicitors.

Science and Engineering

In these faculties the staff is mainly whole-time but, in the engineering subjects in particular, College staff engage in consultative work, and senior members of both faculties give valuable service to State and semi-State bodies, e.g., Bord na Mona, Institute of Industrial Research and Standards, special commissions, etc.

Arts, Philosophy and Celtic Studies

Only in the cases of the faculties of Arts, Philosophy and Celtic Studies could it possibly be said that the faculties are self-contained. It is just these 'self-contained' faculties, however, which will at staff and advanced student level feel grievously their removal from their proximity to the National Library, T.C.D. Library, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Irish Academy.

General Considerations

The Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine are special cases and separate arrangements are being made for them. Wheras the Commission devoted considerable attention to the question of reuniting the third and fourth year agricultural students with College, no consideration was given in this or in any other respect to the veterinary students.

In concluding this section we wish to point out that U.C.D. depends to a far greater extent than do other universities on professors and lecturers who are part-time either in name or in fact. These part-time teachers hold appointments outside the College in the medical, legal and commercial world. We assert that a university college which depends on such a system for a substantial part of its teaching programme must do everything in its power to facilitate the attendance of its part-time teachers, and that a move to Stillorgan Road will aggravate the position in this respect. We foresee that there may be a reluctance on the part of professional people to accept part-time appointments at U.C.D., if it moves out, because of the deleterious effect their academic duties would have on their professional practice.

In such a situation the College might have to appoint many more full-time staff in the professional faculties, a very expensive undertaking.

All faculties without exception would suffer by removal from their present fortunate position in the city centre. We believe that the Commission has not given sufficient weight to the points outlined here and that it has dismissed the objection to the removal on these grounds far too lightly.

The College authorities appear to hope that by going to the Stillorgan Road site the students will be induced to spend more of their free time within the College precincts, and that the 'nine-to-five' attitude held by some of the students will be broken down. There is, however, a distinct possibility that the move would in fact intensify this attitude for the majority of students. Even if some halls of residence are eventually built on the site, they will cater for only

Problems in the Proposed Move 15

a small minority -- such halls cost from £1,500 to £2,000 per student place. The tendency might well be for the average student to get back 'home' or into town as quickly as possible and once there he would be unlikely to travel out again for the evening meeting, hop, or other leisure time activity.

B. THE PROBLEM OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL

A signal failure of the Commission's Report is that it makes no attempt at producing any solution to the problem of the U.C.D. Medical School. It accepts the space requirements proposed by the College for medical buildings (which do not include provision for clinical teaching) viz. 112,150 sq. ft. nett (say 150,000 sq. ft. gross) to cost an estimated £1,075,000 at 1952 values, or allowing for a 15% increase in cost, a sum of £1,236,250 at to-day's prices. This does not include the vaguely mentioned 'Clinical Institute' of which no details are given, although it does appear on the site plan. There is no information given as to its nature, function, relation to the College or to medical education, or to its source of finance.

With regard to the clinical teaching of medicine the following quotation from p.27 of the Report indicates the Commission's position on this vital question (comments and italics are ours): 'In this branch of the University teaching of medicine there is an accommodation problem which requires attention. Its extent is not a matter that we can now determine.' We believe it was their business, to do so, even within their own restricted view of their terms of reference. 'Involved in the problem is the question how much and what part of medicine can be more satisfactorily taught in hospital lecture theatres or laboratories than in the College. But we think that we have seen enough of each of these affiliated hospitals (the Mater and St. Vincent's) to say that the minimum requirements for clinical teaching are lacking. We are not in a position to indicate whose duty it is to see that these requirements should be provided. If for lack of co-ordination among the several authorities nothing is to be done the results for the clinical teaching must be serious. Accommodation for the teaching if clinical medicine is not less important than accommodation for the teaching of other branches of the subject.' This of course is merely to reiterate one of the things that the General Medical Council inspectors and the various official American inspectors to our schools have long been saying.

The College's Architectural Advisory Board spent some time in ascertaining how long it would take a student, by various routes and various means of transport, to travel from the proposed university medical buildings to the site of the proposed Elm Park Hospital and the Commission provides a table of the results (See Appendix II to Appendix Iv of Chapter I of the Report). But in regard to the other teaching hospitals used by U.C.D., all the report has to say is that 'a new College at Stillorgan Road will add to the distance students have to travel to and from the teaching hospitals, and for the general body of students Stillorgan Road is not as easy to reach as Earlsfort Terrace. But these inconveniences are not great.'

Some vitally important points are however ignored by the Commission in this assessment of the situation. At the moment U.C.D. has signed agreements with three 'affiliated' general teaching hospitals, viz. St. Vincent's Hospital (c. 190 beds), the Mater Misericordiae Hospital (c. 435 beds) and, subsequent