Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This amendment seeks to insert a new object into the Bill which would require the agency "to support measures to bring an end to precarious work in the research sector and promote quality and sustainable employment for all researchers". The issue of workers' rights in higher education and the research section more broadly is one I have been raising for a long time. In 2018, I launched TASC's Living with Uncertainty report and highlighted how prevalent insecure contracts had become in the very spaces we need to analyse and examine the employment landscape. I expressed the worry that if such practices continue they could chill the intellectual challenge and critique we rely on as policymakers.

I have emphasised again and again the issue with precarious and insecure contracts, not just short-term contracts but short-hour contracts, nine-month contracts and hour-by-hour contracts. We are not talking about a three-year or five-year contract but about the use of hour-by-hour contracts in the academic context, and nine-month contracts as well. There has been a prevalence of these. We need to ensure the research landscape is one where people can thrive and bring critical and long-form thought, and where they have the security to think critically, challenge, experiment and try things out, rather than a climate of deep insecurity for those working in higher education institutions or research. That is not just bad for them and does not just mean it is hard for them to get mortgages, have a life and plan their lives. It means we lose out as a society because we will have less diversity in the research space, people leaving because they feel they cannot afford to work in research and increased danger of groupthink, which is one of the greatest dangers for research and innovation. We will also lose out on deep, challenging thinking when people have to think about their contract next year or next month and are not in a position to indulge in longer form thought processes, experimentation and research.

This is the big changer Bill. The HEA Bill radically reformed the structures of our universities and higher education institutions. Now the Research and Innovation Bill is supposedly setting up almost a whole new landscape in which research and innovation will take place. In both of those large and significant Bills, which are making massive changes to the research landscape, the important, thorny and essential underlying issue of the conditions, terms, security and career progression of those doing this work has not been adequately addressed. Bringing a significant Bill like this through is an opportunity to also make sure it is significant for those working in research and to send a signal to them.

I will go through a number of approaches. One concerns the objects of the agency and is under amendment No.6. Amendment No. 13 seeks to amend section 9(1)(e) by specifying that the functions of the agency "promote the engagement, retention and development of the skills and capacity [and careers] of researchers of an excellent standard in the national system of research and innovation". This is a small amendment. This is taking the language already in the Bill and stating that, as well as promoting "the engagement, retention and development of the skills and capacity of researchers", we will also support their careers. Amendment No. 14 inserts a new function into the Bill, requiring that the agency, "in co-operation with An tÚdarás, promote, support and develop tangible plans to end precarious work in the higher education sector”.

We are approaching crisis in the higher education sector. We have practices brought in by an employment control framework in the past, which continues to this day and which limits the amount of talent, the security of contract and the amount of permanent and secure employees across our higher education institutions. That was compounded by practices that became embedded of shorter and shorter term contracts, including nine-month contracts and hour-by-hour contracts. Insecurity has become the norm for many in our higher education institutions. It has been layered with a cost-of-living crisis and lack of affordability in housing. Something unfair in itself, now compounded with the cost of living, is becoming impossible for many talented individuals, people with the potential to achieve extraordinary results for society if they could afford to stay in our higher education institutions and develop research within those institutions.

The precarity has become extraordinarily impactful in that we are seeing less diversity than five or ten years ago in some areas of research. People are being driven out of it, women in particular, because they feel they cannot afford to be in such an insecure sector and support their family.This is a chance. People will be looking to this Bill. The Irish Federation of University Teachers, the PhD workers organisations, the postgraduate workers organisations and many others have all been very vocal and have highlighted these issues again and again, and I know they will continue to highlight them. However, this is a chance to send a signal that not everything will be solved in this Bill. We want the Department to empower the agency it is setting up in this Bill by giving it a mandate to engage on that issue of employment security to address the problem - it is a problem - of precarious work in our higher education institutions.