Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this timely motion and I applaud the National University of Ireland Senators for introducing it, particularly Senator Higgins, McDowell and Mullen. I also thank the Senators for this morning's briefing in the audiovisual room. I welcome everyone in the Gallery.

The motion addresses several issues, the biggest of which is the precarious employment that academic staff experience. As highlighted by previous speakers, there are 11,200 lecturers who have been employed by universities and higher education institutions on a temporary or casual basis. These are not considered employees of an institution and, as IFUT has noted, they are expected to "Deliveroo" their lectures and are paid on an hourly basis. I was on a campus in Limerick only last week when an academic stopped me. She said she knew who I was and various other bits and pieces. I will not plámás myself too much. She told me she was after getting tenure. She could not believe it and said it was incredible. She told me about the staff in the institution in question who, right now, are effectively working for free because they are not being paid into the examination period. They are effectively volunteering their time. They will get paid a couple of euro for each exam they correct but they have to go through them at an almighty pace to even make minimum wage in an hour. I could not believe she was talking about staff in an academic institution effectively working for free because they want to see out the end of their modules or the term because they are on precarious contracts.

As has been said, precarious work excludes many people from entering the academic professions. The lack of financial security and supports is making it nearly impossible for someone from a working-class background to make it in academia. It says so much about us as a society and our research if we have a social class barrier in the teaching and research sector. I have spoken previously about friends and colleagues who have fled Ireland to find academic work in New Zealand, Iceland and other parts of the world because they simply could not afford to stay here. I have academic friends who have put off having families and have no access to "normal" life milestones because they are in this precarious place.

I will briefly talk about PhD researchers. The Labour Party passed a motion of confidence establishing our support for the campaign of the Postgraduate Workers Organisation for a fair deal for postgraduates and recognition as workers. If anyone wants to hear a bit more about that, we have a "Bread and Roses" podcast where we did an interview with Eoghan, who is in the Gallery, in which he spoke all about life as a PhD researcher. That is enough plugging about me. I am rapidly running out of time.

The motion recognises higher education as a public good and it should be treated as such. Many of us have spoken about this previously. The impact of treating higher education as a business with precarious contracts, low pay and funding gaps highlights the core issue with all of these problems. We simply do not invest enough in our third level sector. We should be investing in it so as to alleviate the plight of precarious employment and of PhD researchers struggling to survive, and ensure that both research and teaching in this country are of high quality. If we get rid of precarious employment and treat PhDs as workers, we might actually improve the quality of research and teaching as a knock-on impact. I do not understand why we would want the people who are facilitating research and teaching to struggle to survive.

I will conclude on this on this point. I did not get to speak on the merits of the motion. We need to properly fund our higher education system. An estimate of the value of the higher education sector to the economy indicates that every €1 invested in the sector generates a return of approximately €9. There is therefore absolutely no reason we should not properly fund the higher education sector and deal with the academic precarious employment issue once and for all. I commend the motion and thank the NUI Senators for bringing it forward.