Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I ask that the Minister include a representative of the Postgraduate Workers Alliance on that group. It is a specific organisation made up of postgraduate researchers across the country and set up precisely to discuss this issue. Its presence at those meetings would be important. For me, there is something quite simple here, which is that where people are engaged in productive labour, they should be paid for that work.

There is a more general issue beyond PhD researchers deserving a living wage for all their teaching hours. It is also time to recognise their research work as work. In Sweden and certain other countries, PhD researchers are recognised as workers and paid a wage for their work, but here they are dealt with as students who must go begging and applying for grant aid to support their research. The result is that many who would like to do a PhD simply cannot afford to do so unless they have wealthy parents. Does the Minister agree that research should also be recognised as work and that the researchers should be paid a living wage for it?

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