Professor Hugh Brady

Professor Hugh Brady, former president of UCD and current vice-chancellor and president of the University of Bristol, called for immediate action to address education in the wake of Brexit.

He made the comments in his keynote address at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce this morning.

The senior academic was invited to reflect on the impact of Brexit, particularly as the UK is Ireland’s “most significant European research collaborator in terms of funding, publications and citations”.

Professor Brady said: “I sincerely hope that Ireland works with the UK, deal or no deal, to ensure that there is alignment of funding programmes to promote collaborative research.”

However, he said he wanted to “extend my analysis back to the beginning of the global financial crisis as the political and policy responses in the UK and Ireland to these two seismic events – the crash and a looming Brexit – could not have been not been more different”.

Professor Brady said the UK’s response to the crash had been to “steadfastly protect its higher education and research budgets” by increasing tuition fees and introducing a student loan system.

Ireland, on the other hand, “went in the exact opposite direction – major cuts in state funding per student; an unwillingness to grasp the nettle of tuition fees or loans to fill the gap; significant erosion of its research funding base; and significant shackling of university autonomy”.

He suggested that the Citizens’ Assembly could consider the “necessary hard choices” regarding investment in higher education and research if it is “viewed too politically difficult for any single party”.