Dr. Niamh Hourigan:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to attend this meeting. I will focus on what has happened in my department since 2010, which provides an interesting context for the discussion we are having today. I have been working in the higher education sector in Ireland since 1997 and in UCC for 14 years. The department I run was particularly negatively affected by the crash. In 2009, we had a small staff for a large student cohort of 900 to 1,000 students, varying year on year. Between 2010 and 2011, as a consequence of both a demographic quirk in terms of when our staff were hired and the incentivised retirement scheme, five members of our very small core staff retired. We were left with a skeleton staff to deal with huge student numbers and with no possibility of replacing those staff as a result of the employment control framework. In that scenario we were obliged to collapse modules and create classes with larger student numbers, even though we all know the advantages of small group teaching. We launched new programmes even though we did not have the staff to teach our existing programmes. We also contributed to a range of other new programmes across the institution. We put a massive impetus into generating research funding.

In 2008, my department, together with the department of mathematics, was ranked as the top research department in the university, which placed it equivalent to the top 10% to 15% of departments in the UK. However, we have lost a lot of our core research-active staff as part of the retirement exit. Moreover, many local sources of funding - particularly in social sciences, which is my area - disappeared, as did many national sources. This meant we had to chase international funding, including schemes like Horizon 2020. We have been successful in that regard but it has involved massive demands in terms of engaging with other institutions. All such bids are required to be inter-institutional and involve travel to Brussels and other places to meet with institutional partners. We were facing those demands in the context of the constraints imposed on us in terms of staffing. We did all the things we were told to do under austerity. We did more with less, generated income through increased student numbers, started new programmes and won funding awards. Our performance has been mirrored in a number of other colleges and departments across the EU. However, as head of department, my concern is for how long this can realistically be sustained. A response to a Dáil question in 2014 indicated that the staff-student ratio in the sector was 1:19. The Cassells reports refers to a ratio of 1:21. My colleagues and I can only dream about those type of staffing levels. Our current staff-student ratio is 1:45. When we include our new programmes, it tops 1:50. That is the reality we are dealing with.

The international league tables have been hard on Irish universities, for good reason. In the case of my department, operating with a staff-student ratio of 1:45 makes it almost impossible to give students the level of attention that is required, particularly given the specific strains students are experiencing in terms of housing and debt. Furthermore, we are finding it very difficult to deliver the inclusion agenda, to which my department and the institution have a strong commitment. There are huge challenges in supporting students with special needs in this type of environment. In the past two years, we have lost two of our most high-performing staff members and are struggling to replace them even though there is a huge supply in the labour market. That reflects the types of stresses under which we are perceived to be operating. As manager of a university department, I find the discourse around the requirement to perform and reform very problematic. We have done more work with half the staff in the past five years. If I tell my staff they need to perform better, it will be met with a good degree of cynicism. The source of the crisis in the third level sector is not a lack of performance by staff but the funding situation and the urgency with which it needs to be addressed. It is important that front-line staff in the universities are upfront about the extent of those challenges.