Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 15, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following: “(e) to ensure good quality working conditions for academic and non-academic staff in designated institutions of higher education;”.

This amendment would ensure good-quality working conditions for academic and non-academic staff in designated institutions of higher education. Precarious employment has been allowed to spread throughout higher education. This needs to be a specific responsibility for the HEA. Governance of the sector must relate to the working conditions of all workers in the sector. According to the OECD, Ireland's student to staff ratio is 23.4, which is far out of line with the OECD average of 15.1. This can only be addressed by a new, sustainable funding model.

In an effort to address the need for student-facing staff, colleges have engaged occasional or hourly-paid lecturers. These employees are not technically lecturers as lecturing staff are defined as those contracted to undertake a range of academic duties encompassing teaching, research and contribution and scholarly activity. Across the higher education sector, different job titles or terms are used to describe those engaged in this manner, including part-time teaching assistants, part-time assistant lecturers, occasional lecturers, etc. Those engaged in this manner are usually on short, fixed-term contracts and are only paid for their teaching. They have no opportunity to engage in research work, even though being active in research is core to the role of a lecturer and the higher education sector. Trade unions recently informed this committee that some institutes of higher education have failed to afford the terms of the public sector agreements to those engaged in this manner. The precarious nature of this engagement is further compounded by the fact that there is no sectoral engagement on industrial relations matters across the university sector. None of this will be new to the Minister. I hope he will accept this amendment, or at least the principle that the HEA should have a role in this area. It is something we have to tackle head-on.