Ms Joan Donegan:

I concur with Ms Dolan, who spoke about consultation. That is extremely important. The engagement of the new Department of Higher and Further Education, Research, Innovation and Science with the trade union movement and congress has been important for us. It is the first time IFUT has engaged with the Government. That has been very positive over the past year, not just in terms of sharing ideas and getting a sense of where the Government and we are. We were also able to bring that to our members so that we can have informed discussions rather than taking positions. That is really important and I hope lessons have been learned from that process that can be carried forward.

The term "trade union" should be in the Bill. I hope cognisance is taken of that because it is very important to us. If we are not recognised in the Bill, how can we genuinely engage with the Government at a national level?

The most important issue in all of this is, as I have said, funding. It is as if it has been an invisible crisis. Academics in all higher education institutions have been working seven days a week to try to keep the show on the road. Our students are happy with their education, irrespective of all of the difficulties they faced during the Covid period, and that is a huge tribute to those staff members. I can tell the committee that they are absolutely exhausted, and are looking forward to having Covid behind them and getting back to some kind of normality in September. The funding issue will not have gone away. They will still be stretched, which is a significant problem for us.

On the link with business, there is no hard data on researchers and what is happening with regard to primary and applied research. There does not seem to be any investment in blue sky research, which is really important. They are some things that I hope the committee might take on board.