Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising it. This is an area where I am determined to make progress. Our country's future economic and social well-being is dependent on human capital. We spend a great deal of time in the Oireachtas speaking about capital, but we do not speak enough about it in the context of human capital. An example of what we can do in this regard is to invest in research innovation, the ability of that to translate into academia, industry and the regions, and the contribution that Ireland Inc. can make to meeting some national and global challenges. This is why we decided to commission an independent review. I am grateful to its co-chairs. I believe it was yesterday that I brought the first output of the review to the Cabinet. It will be published early next week, probably on Monday.

We need to make progress on the stipend. I cannot get into budget day commitments and the like – we all know the process we have to go through – but the stipend is an issue. We have made some progress. When I entered this Department, we moved to equalise the Irish Research Council, IRC, and Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, stipends. The IRC one was much lower. We have seen some increase in the stipends, but we have more to do. Let us say that we will all be shocked if the report does not indicate that.

As the Deputy rightly said, work also needs to be done on how we support PhD researchers in mitigating the challenges they experience with the visa system, spousal access to the labour market, etc. The review's first output will address these matters as well and make recommendations, on which my Department will have to liaise with the Department of Justice.

I have met researchers and it is fair to say that people have strong views on the question of employee status. I have an open mind on it, but the most important issue is how we support people and address matters like maternity benefit, paternity benefit, career pathways, healthcare supports and stipends. Some of the countries that do this well classify their PhD researchers as employees while others do not. The most important thing we can do is to ensure that the supports for PhD researchers become much better than they are today. There are equally strong views on both sides of the debate and I have heard them both. Let us see where the reviews bring us, but my approach is that we must support PhD researchers better. We must keep people in Ireland, and attract others from outside, to do research so that the best and the brightest are working here. Something that came out of the stakeholder engagement was that we needed to ensure that some of the supports in place through universities were available to PhD researchers as well and that that information was known to them.

The stipends need to increase, we need to support PhD researchers better financially and we need to consider supports outside the stipend, particularly those having to do with maternity. We need to address career pathways and making the visa process easier and more streamlined. We have much to do.

I am not approaching it from an ideological viewpoint but from the point of view that we have to make real progress here and the practical steps we can take. The first step is the publication next week, and then we will go forward to the Estimates process.