Mr. Frank Jones:

It is purely funding. The problem is that when people such as part-time teaching assistants are employed on these types of contracts repeatedly, they secure permanency in their positions under the fixed-term work legislation but they are permanent in a job they should not really be doing. They should have the full lecturing experience. That will make the situation even more dire into the future. It is a big job. There is a huge task to be done here, not just in saying that from now on we will have no part-time teaching assistants and will only have lecturers. I like that the USI has put a figure on the student to staff ratio. That is important because we need figures and costs to aim for. It will also take time to tackle this. ICTU's submission stated that this should be the start of something and I agree with that. We should not just address the student to staff ratio by putting a load of hourly-paid, precariously engaged teaching assistants into a university because that will not sort anything.