Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Congratulations again , a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, on your victory. I welcome the establishment of a Ministry responsible for higher education and research. It is a very positive move. If the importance of investing in research in medicine and other areas needs to be underlined, one need look no further than the lessons of the pandemic itself. There is clearly a deficit in these areas, but we have a lot of skilled and talented young people, graduates, postgraduates and so on. We need to invest in them and in research that will really benefit our society. I hope that lesson is more obvious than ever after Covid-19.

The purpose of this Ministry should be to ensure that access to higher education is as wide and unfettered as possible. One key aspect of that should be the elimination of all fees for students entering third level education or undertaking postgraduate degrees. They should not have to suffer some of the highest fees in the European Union; a €3,000 registration fee for undergraduates and a €6,000 fee for people doing masters degrees. That is completely unacceptable. It was unacceptable before Covid-19 and it is entirely unacceptable now. Many of the opportunities for undergraduates to take summer jobs to earn money for their fees are gone. Their parents may have suffered reductions in income or loss of employment. If we really see the importance of education and want to open it up, we should remove all the financial obstacles and eliminate all fees to provide the widest possible access.

Of course, people will say the socialists believe there is a free money tree and we do not have the money for that. Let me point out that as a proportion of GDP, our spending on education, health and just about every other key public service is among the lowest in Europe. Investing more in public services and in key areas like education is not a radical idea. It is standard across Europe. The problem is that we redirect resources away from higher education and third level education towards tax breaks for research and development available to wealthy multinational corporations that pay a pittance in tax. Rather than invest money in research in our public universities, we give nearly €1 billion a year in research and development tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. It seems to me that they have enough money. We should close those tax loopholes. We should redirect the €700 million or €800 million a year that goes to a handful of multinational corporations into our universities to remove fees and invest in more research and greater access to higher education.

I might have left my points at that and welcomed this Bill, but there is a big difficulty. This Bill and the setting up of this new Ministry are linked to something absolutely scandalous, namely, the plans to increase by €16,000 the already high salaries of Ministers of State, as if €124,000 is not enough. Last night, when I asked the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, how he could possibly justify this, he said it was fair to expect pay equality around the Cabinet table. I thought about this for a minute and realised the Government believes in pay equality in the public service. That is why people earning €124,000 could not possibly work beside other Ministers who are on higher salaries though they do the same job. They must be given a €16,000 increase. It is only fair. We must have equality.

Then one remembers that apparently the same principle of equality in the public service does not apply to teachers, who are on a fraction of that salary. It is okay for teachers entering education after 2011 to earn a substantially lower starting salary than the teachers doing exactly the same job beside them do. Inequality is okay there, but it is not okay between Ministers around the Cabinet table. It is also okay for lecturers in higher education to earn a starting salary of €38,000, though those who before started before 2011 earned €42,000. That pay inequality is okay, but we cannot possibly have pay inequality for Ministers on €124,000. We have to give them an additional €16,000.

That is a scandalous double standard. Those double standards will be felt by our nurses and front-line health workers more than anyone. They were the ones who protected us and continue to protect us at great personal cost during the pandemic. What did those health workers get as their reward from the State for losing their lives and suffering the highest Covid-19 infection rates of health workers anywhere in the world? They got a round of applause. They did not get a pay increase or pay equality. I suggest we save the cost of this pay increase by just giving the Ministers a round of applause, the same thing they gave the nurses who protected us. That is hollow thanks for the workers on the front line who protected us.

Ministers must have pay equality and they must get €16,000. The double standard is frankly nauseating and it will not be lost on people. I have just come from a meeting of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response which heard from taxi drivers who are financially on their knees. How will students who cannot get summer jobs pay the fees they are now being charged for attending lectures one day a week? They are still being charged some of the highest fees imaginable. Workers in the arts, music and entertainment industries have seen their incomes decimated but the Ministers of State must have a €16,000 pay increase on top of a €124,000 salary. It is absolutely shocking. We would like to support a Bill to create a new Ministry for an important area like higher education and research, but how on earth can we possibly support a pay increase for junior Ministers with already massive salaries? If they need pay equality around the Cabinet table, why not reduce the pay of the senior Ministers? That would be a better way to achieve pay equality. It would be a bit fairer. It would send a better signal to the people who are suffering because of the economic fallout of Covid-19. That is my suggestion. Let us give the Ministers of State a round of applause instead of a €16,000 pay increase.

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