Mr. Tom Boland:

There is some merit in the point they make. By and large our academic staff are quite well paid by reference to other systems, with the probable exceptions of our nearest neighbour, Australia and the United States. As matters stand, pay in universities is governed by the same procedures as pay in the broader public sector. The HEA is in the process of investigating the sustainability of funding in higher education. Sustainability is not just a question of how to get more money and where to put it. It is also a question of how it is used. In that context, one of the areas we want to explore is industrial relations matters and human resource management to find out how we might quantify the kind of flexibility universities and institutes could be given and how this might impact on their capacity to manage their resources. As matters stand, they have the same flexibility in the overall structure of public sector pay as the Secretary General of a Department or the chief executive of the HEA, that is, none.