Professor Hugh Brady:

If the Deputy is asking what the institutions have delivered in the last three years, we have absorbed in our case approximately €6 million in cuts, with a 10% cut in staff and a 10% increase in student numbers. We have managed that through a variety of mechanisms, including to the engagement of staff with the full economic costing of activities. There is full engagement under the Croke Park agreement with that activity. There is also a new academic contract that allows greater flexibility.

There is university-wide use of workload models, which is probably the most useful tool we have. We do not need to compare how many practicals lecturer one is supervising compared to lecturer two. What we want to know is how each programme, school and college is doing and whether it has set out targets for student recruitment, student quality, international student recruitment, revenues associated with this such as research income and so on. There is a sweep of activities on which we need each of the academic units to deliver. We use the academic workload model to determine the distribution of that work within the particular college. If somebody in our business school is less research - active, he or she is likely to do twice as much teaching as somebody engaged in research. Since the report was published there has been very significant progress and staff engagement on these issues. This may have been facilitated by the Croke Park agreement.