Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I am acutely aware of what the Government has committed and I welcome the additional allocation in budget 2018.

However, none of this deals with the issue I have raised, namely, the failure to ensure payment to students who qualify under the terms of the income liability criteria for the full duration of their doctoral studies. They could have spent four years on their basic degree and two years on their master's - six years in total - and then they are only allowed two more years. That could be cut off at eight years, and they may well take the extra year or year and a half to complete their studies. I know two students who do not have a penny. It is no use talking about tax relief when they do not have any money. These are excellent students. This is a discrimination that the Minister of State needs to rectify in the next budget. Researchers should not be penalised because of course programming. The ruthless decision by SUSI to conclude research while it is still in progress must stop, but SUSI is only implementing policies laid down by the Government. SUSI is just an administrative body; the Department of Education and Skills has control of the purse strings and the policy decision. PhD students do not down tools in June and start back in September; they work right throughout the year. PhD funding should be paid across 12 months. There are researchers in my constituency who do not have the finance to access university facilities during the summer months.

The attitude of the Department of Education and Skills to the financially vulnerable must be rectified immediately because it is the Department that is at fault here and is failing to address this issue. The Minister of State's reply does nothing to address this issue. I acknowledge that she has a great commitment to this and I admire some of the work she is doing. Researchers and their supervisors should be supported, not vetoed, cut off midstream and told, "Tally-ho. See what you get and do what you can yourself to try to finish." They do not have any outside support, bursaries or anything else. The Department needs to cease the current discrimination and fund all research equally. In three short words, stop terminating research. It should be funded for the full duration while people complete their doctorates.

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