Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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Question 305: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if his attention has been drawn to the fact that sports and others facilities at Dublin Institute of Technology have ceased, due to cutbacks, and that a number of staff have been advised that their contracts of employment will not be renewed when the contracts terminate in 2009; the impact that these decisions will have on the education of the students and the work and morale of the staff; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37861/09]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy is aware, the purpose of the Government decision to implement a recruitment and promotion moratorium in the public sector is to facilitate a permanent, structural reduction in the numbers of staff serving in the public sector and is intended to contribute significant and ongoing savings to the Exchequer. In applying this moratorium generally, teaching and research activities in the education sector have been afforded significant exemptions relative to other areas of public expenditure. Nonetheless, the Deputy will appreciate that the sector has to contribute towards overall public sector numbers reductions.

In the area of higher education, the Government agreed that an employment control framework be developed to provide for the application of the moratorium arrangements to higher education institutions, subject to the continued oversight and review by the HEA and both my Department and the Department of Finance. This framework allows flexibility around recruitment into posts that are considered essential to maintaining core teaching and research activities, subject to an overall ceiling on numbers employed. The Government is anxious to work with the publicly funded higher education institutions in achieving necessary reductions in public expenditure within the sector as an essential part of overall budgetary strategy. The employment control framework aims to enable this while providing sufficient flexibility for the protection of frontline teaching and research activities.

It is a matter for the individual higher education institutions, including Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), to manage their staffing resources in the context of implementing the framework. I understand that, within the terms of the employment control framework, the HEA are currently in discussions with DIT in relation to options for addressing some specific operational issues that have arisen there.