Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I support Deputy Catherine Murphy on this. It is an area we need to devote more time to. There are myriad questions arising from that response. The mapping of contracts across the higher education institutions, HEI, landscape is unclear and opaque. Further light needs to be shone on it because it has permutations for the public purse. I would support 100% any attempts by this committee to devote some considerable time as necessary to this issue.

The Minister stated at an Irish Federation of University Teachers, IFUT, conference that he wishes to do something about precarious contracts. I recognise that is a matter of policy; however, it seems that even at ministerial level there is a recognition of the nature of these contracts and we should continue the work of the last Committee of Public Accounts on this issue.

I would like to explore further the relationship from a spending point of view between Enterprise Ireland and some of the institutes of technology, IOTs, for instance, in relation to things like innovation vouchers and partnerships. There is a whole space that warrants further examination in respect of how funding is used to support the scaling-up and spin-out of companies, and how the spin-out infrastructure is supported within these organisations. Where is the money really going? Is it resulting in the level of output it is supposed to result in, in relation to job creation or the creation of companies that are productive, as opposed to companies sustained within a system, in some cases for inordinate amounts of time? It begs the question about productivity. I would support that call.