Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

3 o’clock

Concerns have been raised in Cork, and I am sure in Kerry also, in respect of the Technological Universities Bill 2015 and the proposed merger of the Cork Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology Tralee to form the Munster technical university. Workers in these colleges are expecting job losses, and I believe they are probably right to expect job losses. The best that the Higher Education Authority, HEA, can offer at the moment is to say that it does not envisage job losses. This seems to be a rather slippery form of words. It does not take a genius to work out that rationalisations in administration and academic staff could follow this proposed merger. I ask the Minister a direct question. The HEA has said that it does not envisage job losses but is the Minister prepared to be more precise and give a guarantee that there will not be job losses? Is she prepared to deny to the union concerned that there will be job losses and will the Minister give a guarantee to the House and the workers in this regard?

On the superannuation issue, the employee self-service, ESS, pension scheme is the lower tier pension scheme for education workers who were recruited after 2015. It is an inferior scheme because it provides workers with a career average pension as opposed to a final salary pension. I note that this is the scheme for new recruits under the arrangements as planned in the Bill. It amounts to an endorsement of a two-tier system and discrimination. I ask the Minister to give a guarantee that there will not be job losses in the institutes in Tralee and Cork with the formation of the Munster technical university.

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