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

I appreciate that. I think they would appreciate meeting the Minister. While the opportunity for them to make submissions is important, the end game is the critical thing here. The vast majority of people doing PhD research in this country are living in poverty. That seriously impacts on their ability to do their research or even continue as PhD researchers. We give more than €700 million in tax breaks, mostly to private companies, for research and development and yet in our universities and higher education institutions, our researchers are living in poverty, in most cases earning less than the minimum wage. There is huge discrimination against non-EU PhD students, with many of them doing unpaid teaching and not being treated as workers when they clearly are. Without them, many of our higher education institutions simply would not function and yet they are either not paid or are paid below the minimum wage. They need to be treated as workers, as they are elsewhere. There is no question about it. They need to be treated as employees with collective bargaining rights, sick pay and all the other things because that is what they are doing. They are working in our universities and teaching our undergraduates. We should recognise how important they are, given the skills shortages we have and the need for us to be at the cutting edge of research and development, rather than forcing most of them to live in poverty.

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