Ms Annette Dolan:

I have an answer to what Mr. Jones is saying. We have negotiation rights for all of the researchers in the institutes of technology, IOTs, and the technological universities and we have lodged a claim. We were asked to break that claim up into little bits and front-load the most important aspect of the conditions of service, which we did. Several years ago, we lodged a claim in respect of pensions for researchers. Everybody around the table is now an agreement that this should happen, including everybody on the official and staff side. It has not yet happened, however, because we are still waiting for a decision from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. We are keeping our fingers and toes crossed that we will get a "Yes" soon. Hopefully, if the Minister is listening, he may say "Yes".

We then go on to the next aspect of that. As I said earlier, we want researchers to move on to a career framework. We have suggested having an assistant lecturer scale moving on to the lecturer scale because that, at least, would be progression. The researchers we represent have a contract for a number of years. That contract finishes and they then have no rights in respect of continuity of employment. Unfortunately, the collective agreements we have reached in respect of the contracts of indefinite duration, CIDs, after two years do not apply to researchers.

Those people come to us and they want to start families and ask their bank manager for a mortgage. The bank manager will ask if the job is permanent and mortgage approval will not be forthcoming. These researchers are real people with real lives who want to make a contribution and, unfortunately, we are losing the best of them because they cannot remain within education. They are moving to industry or abroad where there are better opportunities, conditions of employment and salaries.

That is unfortunate. This Bill presents an opportunity.