Pages 14 & 15

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