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

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 9, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following: “ “researchers’ representative group” means—

(a) a trade union which is the holder of a negotiation licence under Part II of the Trade Union Act 1941, or

(b) any independent and self-governing body, recognised by a higher education provider, research body or by the Minister, that is established for the purpose of promoting the general interests of postgraduate researchers, and of representing such postgraduate researchers, both individually and collectively, in respect of their well-being and academic, disciplinary and other matters arising within, and outside of that institution;

“postgraduate researcher” shall include doctoral students and other early-career researchers employed in institutions of higher education and research, in accordance with the Salzburg Principles;”.

Seven minutes is not very long to speak to multiple amendments. The purpose of this group of amendments is to ensure that we have proper representation of postgraduate researchers and that those researchers, as proposed in amendment No. 1, will be defined in line with the Salzburg principles. As I am sure the Minister knows, the Salzburg principles are a series of principles that were put together by the European University Association, of which all the Irish universities are members. For example, principle iv states, "Doctoral candidates as early stage researchers: should be recognized as professionals – with commensurate rights – who make a key contribution to the creation of new knowledge."

The critical point is the Postgraduate Workers Organisation, which represents postgraduate workers, as the Minister knows, have been campaigning for some time to be recognised as workers because that is what they are. Many of them live in poverty, frankly, while they do important research creating "new knowledge", to use that phrase, which is vital knowledge for our society, economy and culture, and for science, the humanities and so on. These are workers who have lives, often have kids, and have relationships and rents to pay. Very few of them can afford a mortgage because they are on such pitiful incomes. They point out that even though the stipends for those who are funded by the Irish Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, have been increased slightly, it is not as high as originally recommended and is far below best practice in most of the rest of Europe in terms of incomes. It is far below a living income and much less than postgraduate workers and researchers get from best practice in Europe, where people can be paid up to €40,000 or €50,000. People get €22,000 here but, let us not forget, that applies to only 30% of postgraduate researchers. Some 70% are often on much less than that and are living in poverty.

Postgraduate workers need to be treated as workers, they need to be given a living wage, and they need to have proper conditions of employment. Their representative groups and organisations, as outlined in amendment No. 1, need to be recognised and subsequently, as referenced in some of the other amendments, represented on the board. They also need to be consulted when the corporate plan of the new agency is being put together. That is what is proposed in the amendments I tabled. When the annual plan of the agency is being put together, they, and not just the bodies prescribed in the Bill so far, need to be consulted. In addition, amendment No. 30 outlines that if other bodies, companies or agencies are looking to get funding from the new research agency, it has to be taken into account in deciding whether such funding is forthcoming from the agency, that "The Agency will give due regard to employment conditions for researchers at any applicant body when considering their application" and "The Agency will take measures to ensure that individuals carrying out research funded by the Agency are in receipt of any attendant employee rights, in line with the Salzburg Principles.”

The intent of the amendments is very clear. The Minister will understand they are about recognising researchers as workers, their rights to have decent conditions of employment and proper representation, and to be consulted in the development of the plans, trajectory and so on of the agency. That is the very least they deserve. We often hear members of the Government talking about the importance of research and innovation but when we look at the reality, researchers are living in poverty, are in precarious employment, and are not treated as employees. It is a very difficult, precarious and, in many cases, unattractive option for people, when you consider the poverty so many researchers are living in. These amendments are very reasonable in that context.

Much of the guidance for the amendments I tabled in this regard comes from the document recently produced by the Postgraduate Workers Organisation, where comparisons are given between postgraduate workers here and in the rest of Europe. These show we are far inferior in our treatment of postgraduate workers compared with most places across Europe. The document also cites the Salzburg principles I mentioned, which came from the Bologna process, and the European Charter for Researchers and the code of conduct for the recruitment for researchers, which clearly indicate the imperative - I do not have time to quote it - to ensure that we give decent conditions of employment, social security rights, pension rights and so on, to our researchers so that it is an attractive, secure, sustainable environment for people to work in our universities and higher education institutions as researchers. That is not the case at present. If these amendments are included as part of the mandate of the new research body, we would be taking a huge step forward for research and innovation, and for giving decent employment rights, incomes and conditions to our postgraduate researchers.

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