Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their opening statements and contributions. I am balancing a couple of committees, but I have read all of the statements and I was keeping an eye on this meeting.

It is fair to say Ireland probably has a greater number of SMEs than other countries. When I spoke about this previously, I noted that 1 million people are employed by SMEs. Do the witnesses feel that the third level sector represents that emphasis we have on a different kind of model of employment compared with other parts of the world?

I have served on údarás in the National University of Ireland Galway. It is interesting that we do not have precarious workers represented at the board level of universities. It is a very interesting point. Dr. Younus and Dr. Kennedy mentioned the kind of precarious nature of the work that there is now in third level, yet it is not represented when it comes to the management structure of universities. How does that play out? Are we embedding it because we do not have that representative nature?

I had put in the suggestion to have Dr. Younus at this meeting so we could have women in research represented while we were going through these issues, which is very important. I would love to have more information from Dr. Younus around that lack of representation of women at research level. Is there a funding deficit and is there something we need to be doing funding-wise? It seems to me that what is coming up in these statements is that it is funding but it is also representation, and then it is the long-term benefits. I wanted to hit on those few points.