Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will write to IFUT on the basis of Deputy Sherlock's intervention, particularly as this is an important matter and it deserves a response. IFUT deserves the rationale for this legislation and I am very happy to try to address the issues it has raised by way of, from my perspective, clarification. Precarious employment is an issue IFUT raises regularly and I note Deputy Farrell had a briefing session with the federation in the Leinster House complex not that long ago. IFUT is right to highlight that the level of precarious employment in academic is far too high. As we have increased core funding for the higher education sector, it has been able to take on more people. I said that at the federation's conference, to the university presidents at the IUA Council when I met them a few weeks ago and say it everywhere I go because we mean it, we mean it as a Department and we mean it across parties in these Houses. It is a statement of fact that funding enabled the sector last year to create, from memory, about 1,500 permanent posts and somewhere around 1,000 posts. We have said that is not all about just creating new posts, but also about converting people who are on precarious terms and conditions to proper, full-time jobs with better terms and conditions. I recognise IFUT's ongoing campaign on that and the concern expressed by the Deputies opposite about that. The second thing to say to close out the IFUT correspondence relates to the point I made earlier around PhD researchers and the independent review into how we can do better by them. We published the first report. We will publish the second next month, along with a Government response of actions that can be taken.

More broadly, and while I accept the bona fides of what the Deputies are trying to do here, the challenge we have is that the new agency will not be the employer. To make a couple of technical points, there is no similar provision using these terms in other recent legislation which either established or update the provisions for an agency of this kind. Someone can be the first, and it is not a good enough reason in and of itself, but it is true. The terms for staff at the agency are dealt with in section 32. The funding award is somewhere between a recruitment and a procurement process, but it is not fully either. It is somewhere in the middle, which is why we had to create the very specific funding award provisions within the Bill. The agency is not employing anyone by awarding them funding. It is not making the individual terms of employment for all the researchers, including PhD researchers, who will be employed in the course of research undertaken as part of an award. The award goes to a principal investigator via the supporting or sponsoring institution. The team they will require and the costs associated with that are outlined in their application. The agency will not be paying any of these directly. The agency will not be the employer and therefore, and I do not say this provocatively, the amendment is not legally appropriate and so we are not in a position to take it. Again, I am not dismissing the seriousness of the issues both Deputies are raising, but the position of this agency as a funder rather than an employer puts it in a different position.