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

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 11, between lines 4 and 5, to insert the following:

“(b) to offer researchers sustainable career development systems at all career stages and to endeavour to ensure that researchers are treated as professionals and as an integral part of the institutions in which they work, in line with the objectives of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers;”.

These amendments are related to the earlier discussion but in a way they are the most substantial ones. Dealing with amendments Nos. 2 and 3 that I have put forward, they are seeking to include, as an objective of the agency:

to offer researchers sustainable career development systems at all career stages and to endeavour to ensure that researchers are treated as professionals and as an integral part of the institutions in which they work, in line with the objectives of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers

Second, a similar objective would be "to ensure the provision of adequate funding for the development of high quality doctoral programmes, in line with the Salzburg Principles".

I will talk to those two. I am using, very deliberately, wording taken from the European Commission's recommendations that I have referenced. They are very clear about the sort of conditions that researchers should enjoy, if we are going to have best practice in developing research and innovation. It is worth quoting some of the things they say. They say that "Member States [should] endeavour to ensure that researchers enjoy adequate social security coverage... portability of pension rights" and a guarantee of social security rights in order to maintain and advance the "attractiveness of a career" in research. I could quote more but it elaborates on this in great detail, and in my amendments, I have directly used the wording of the European Commission's recommendations regarding how we are supposed to support our researchers.

To my mind, that is precisely what one of the key objectives for a research agency should be. The rationale is self-evident even from the wording that is used by the Commission. If being a researcher is not an attractive option, people will not do it. They will not do it, and it will impact negatively on research and innovation. That is the story, as I am sure the Minister has heard from the testimonies of people who are postgraduate researchers. Many of them are on the brink of just giving it up because it is impossible. They are doing work but they are not being treated as workers. They are not given those rights to holiday pay, sick pay, parental leave and all the right pension entitlements and so on that they should get when they are workers. One of the things I think they are discussing - and if they are not, they should be discussing it - is whether they are, in fact, de facto employees in law because of what they do. I think they probably have a good case - if they took it to the WRC or the Labour Court - that they should be categorised, legally speaking, as employees for what they do. However, they are not treated in that way, and they have this very precarious existence.

The point I am making, echoing what the European Commission is saying, is this is not the way to encourage research. We should be about guaranteeing and ensuring the best possible standards of employment and social security rights, and generally making research an attractive option from an income point of view, from an employment security point of view and so on. That is the logic, and I think it is entirely appropriate that they should be included as objects of the new research agency.

In this grouping I also have amendments proposing that an additional object of the agency should be to promote the independence and flexibility of early-career researchers and to preserve and support the independence of academic and research institutions. In that regard, one of the amendments deletes the reference to strengthening the relationship with the Government and Ministers because I believe that research should be independent. It should not be linked to the political priorities of any particular government or to commercial or industrial interests that may want to influence a government about what it should invest in regarding research. It should be driven by the science or the discipline itself. In other words, it should be in the best interests of science, society and humanity, rather than the political interests of a government or commercial interests. That is the logic of these amendments. I think the Minister should accept them. I think they are in line with what the postgraduate workers' representative organisations have asked for. They are in line with what European institutions are saying should happen. It is about how we can best advance and support research. I do not really see any reason the Minister would not accept these amendments.

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