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

The average PhD pay in Europe is €32,000. In the Nordic countries, it starts at €50,000 and progresses to €55,000 on a fixed-term, four-year contract. In the Netherlands, researchers get about 10% more. Indeed, a lot of our people who are doing postgraduate and research work are going to the Netherlands because everything, from housing to fees to the cost of living, is so much better in places like the Netherlands. That is bad news, not just for our PhD researchers but for the entire country. It is urgent that we listen to them and that we get up to a level where they are paid for the work they do and are paid sufficiently well that they are not living in poverty or having to do other jobs impacting on their research. They should be properly remunerated for the work they do so they are not living in poverty. We have a hell of a long way to go. They are also affected by the all the other issues we are facing, like housing and the cost of living. Many of them have families and the majority of our PhD researchers are living below the minimum wage. It is an outrageous situation, quite frankly.

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