Seanad debates

Wednesday, 24 May 2023

10:30 am

Photo of Michael McDowellMichael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State this evening. I welcome the Leas-Chathaoirleach's initiative in establishing sectoral debates for the various university panels. I compliment Senator Higgins on taking the initiative with this particular motion. There is now considerable publicity about the plight of postdoctoral students and the fact they are effectively being exploited by the universities in terms of permanence and pay.

I want to deal with a slightly different issue, which is the issue of academic independence. A large number of people are now bring employed on five-year contracts or three-year contracts, etc., and on terms which might not be well known. Even if during a five-year period they produce three articles in leading journals of research in addition to their lecturing duties, at the end of that period they are not guaranteed anything. They can just be told "thank you and goodnight" and that is the end of them; they are gone. Their job is just gone under current employment law. This is not a new issue because in the 1960s when my uncle by marriage, Michael Tierney, was president of University College Dublin, UCD, there was a huge controversy in this House about the abuse of temporary status for lecturers and its implications for academic independence. A lecturer who is four years into their term cannot really be academically independent if they know that the dean of their faculty can say "thank you for all your efforts, but goodnight".

When these matters were discussed in this House on that occasion, a committee of visitation to the National University of Ireland was appointed to examine the use or abuse of temporary lectureships for staff and its implications for their independence. One of those who made a complaint at the time was John Kenny, who was a lecturer at the law faculty in UCD and later became a Supreme Court judge. The issue I am raising is that people are making life-or-death decisions about younger academics and imposing on them conditions of employment which they do not, cannot and did not comply with themselves to get to where they are. They are now in a position to effectively say to somebody after five years service in a university "thank you, you were a very interesting member of staff but you are gone now". That is wholly wrong. This needs to be considered by the Government. It is an abuse of people. I am not just talking about PhD students; I am talking about young lecturers being denied tenure and a career path. They are effectively in a position where they cannot borrow from banks and building societies because they could be thrown onto the side of the road.

The last thing I will say, as someone who is totally in favour of research, is that due to the manic interest in complying with international indices we are losing sight of the capacity of people to educate students. People with poor English and communications skills are getting jobs simply on the basis of their research record or potential. If we are to keep up standards in universities, that is fine. I am fully in favour of satisfying international indices on research. University lecturers, professors and assistant professors are there to educate as well as to research. It is a combination of two skills. Nobody should be treated as badly as the lecturers who are now on temporary contracts are being treated. As I have said, at the end of five years they are treated as entirely disposable and they face career-changing ends to their employment, with no redress whatsoever. For the last 100 years and more, since the establishment of the National University of Ireland, NUI, and Trinity College Dublin, the idea of tenure and academic independence was something the Irish State cherished and sought to protect.

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