Mr. Donal Keane:

I will be kicking Ms Riordan under the table. In terms of the issue raised, to clarify, when researchers are PhD students they get a stipend but when they graduate and become part of a post-doctoral research team they are part of the staff of the university, albeit they might be on a contract, and under the fixed-term workers act they now get rights whereas five years ago they did not have many rights at all, they just got a succession of short-term contracts for between one and four years depending on funding. Now I understand they get rights from the moment they are signed up and if they do not get a further contract they must be made redundant. It would be a matter for the universities, not us.