Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

That would be useful because I believe there are other things that flow from it. The things are flow from it will be things that will catch up on people later on, such as employment rights, holiday payments and all those other things that go with the casualisation of work. It is certainly prevalent. I have spoken to people in several universities and the same profile is cropping up. It comes back later if people end up, for example, getting a welfare payment that is not a benefit but an allowance. There is a circular point about this possibly being almost a subsidy from the public purse.

While the number is not very large, there are 1,300 people and, again, it is not unusual to have people coming in and guest lecturing, and so on, which can really be of benefit to the college. Let us acknowledge things like that. There were 126 with some number of years and 56 with four years, yet they were occasional staff. The term "occasional staff" could mean people are trying to serve their time to end up becoming permanent staff. It is a class of employment we are seeing more of. The HEA would be the body to address this to and I imagine IFUT would have something to say on this.