“Irish universities and academic staff have consistently delivered above-average outcomes for students, despite diminishing resources. Mr Hennessy now wishes to fix what isn’t broken by imposing new and potentially damaging HR changes on top of ongoing staffing and wage cuts, at a time when ever-more students are enrolling at third-level. He should preferably reacquaint himself with the facts on higher education in Ireland before issuing such cavalier and unhelpful comments in future”, Mr Jennings said.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

Up to 4,000 young and gifted Researchers are being placed in constant insecurity and encouraged to think of their jobs as transitory and short-term, with little recognition, poor pay and no thanks or loyalty from their employers, Mr Jennings states.

“The new university policy, which stipulates that all new employment be on a fixed-term or fixed-purpose contract, is a direct challenge to Irish law and to the European Directive and Framework Agreement upon which that law is based.

“It is being introduced by universities, at the behest of the HEA, while these very same institutions call for greater commitment to research, ask our children to pursue careers in this area and issue high-minded but clearly hypocritical pronouncements about the need for a ‘smart economy’”, , Mr Jennings says.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

Commenting on a report in The Irish Times on 4 March last, IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said there is no evidence whatever to support suggestions that the Department of Education has ‘lost patience’ with the Federation. “Rather, it has been IFUT that has expressed unease at the ’slow bicycle race’ nature of the process and it would appear that other vested interests have adopted an approach of ‘getting their retaliation in first’. In addition, IFUT wishes to clarify that it has not expressed criticism of NUIG proposals, as suggested in the article”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

In one case, a Researcher in NUI Maynooth has been awarded four weeks pay per year of service (pys) on top of her statutory entitlement (two weeks pys) by the Labour Court, in a Determination that is binding on the university. The case was taken by IFUT. In two other cases in UCC, a Rights Commissioner awarded six weeks pay per year of service to two contract employees who had been made redundant following the expiry of their contracts.

Mike Jennings, General Secretary of IFUT, who represented all of the claimants in these cases, said, “These cases make a strong legal point that when contract staff are made redundant, for instance, due to the expiry of their contracts, they must be paid exactly the same redundancy payments as permanent staff would have been paid had they been made redundant”.

It is estimated that there are several thousand workers on contract in Irish universities and many thousands more throughout the Public Sector. This number is increasing due to current Government policy. Mr Jennings said, “What these important victories establish is that at least in the case of severance payments these workers must be treated equally. However, in many cases we believe that we can prove that the workers are in fact entitled in law to be made permanent”.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.

The cases shown in the story, of a small number of very highly paid staff, confirm issues raised by IFUT in 2008: that there were undisclosed pay arrangements for small numbers of senior personnel in the universities. At the time, IFUT condemned the decision by the HEA not to disclose the details of exceptionally high salaries paid to certain senior personnel in six of the seven universities under its remit, a situation exposed by IFUT only through Freedom of Information legislation. IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings said: “Looking at the list at the top 100 earners, one cannot help but be struck by the almost total absence of frontline educators. The list is almost exclusively made up of administrators, bureaucrats and managers.

“Imagine the frustration that will be felt by Assistant Lecturers (starting salary €33 623) or College Lecturers (€48 306) at the allegation that they are ‘high flyers’.

“Such staff have already taken earnings cuts of approximately 20% while the numbers of students they teach has reached the highest levels in Irish history: up 15% in the past two years alone.

“Clearly, anyone who aspires to be rich should not be looking for a job in education”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.

A letter written to the newspaper by the General Secretary in response to the article was published two days later. The General Secretary’s letter is available on The Irish Times Website. A PDF version is also available here.

IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings warned that the HEA’s rôle should instead be to seek to expand education access at a time of increasing demand and to assist in plans for economic recovery.

“A less candid man would not have been so open about cutback threats at a time when academics are voting on the “Croke Park Proposals” which, if accepted, would give the Government a blank cheque to impose all of these things without any meaningful regard for the rights of staff. I am sure that all IFUT members will now understand more than ever the necessity to reject the ‘Croke Park Proposals’ ”, said Mr Jennings.

Mr Jennings warned that the HEA’s analysis was “more sensational than thorough”. “How can you possibly say that our education system lacks critical mass at a time when we have historically high numbers of students in the system? How can you possibly argue, just when the points race is beginning to start up again because of the imbalance between student places and demand, that now is the time to start shutting down courses and colleges? It would be much more consistent with the rôle of the HEA were it to lobby hard for more funds for our seriously underfunded higher education system, rather than attacking that system and asking it to shrink itself,” said Mr Jennings.

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here.

“If there are issues in higher education that Minister Coughlan is concerned about and does not understand, she should come to us”, said the General Secretary. “Who is better able to speak knowledgeably about an issue such as Grade Inflation: the people who work in the system, or the CEOs of two multi-national companies?”

Discussing the current national situation, Mike Jennings stressed that no national sense of common purpose exists. He said the economy has been mismanaged into a spectacular collapse and that many of the most objectionable aspects of the ‘transformation agenda’ for higher education will not result in any significant financial savings.

“For those of us who work at the service of the public good there is a constant belittlement of what we are, who we are and what we do. Making do with income cuts of between 17% and 20% is not easy.

“It is not just the loss of income imposed by a discriminating pension levy, by increases in taxes and by reductions in salary. Threats to our employment contracts, asking us to sign up – sight unseen – to a Higher Education Review Body Report which has not yet even been written and attempts to make us spend endless wasted hours counting and accounting for every minute of our days, are not based on the need to spend money more wisely. They are petty, ideological-inspired attacks on the whole fabric of a higher education system which some of our controllers have never understood and never valued.”

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here. The General Secretary’s speech is available in full here.

“In spite of underfunding, the Irish University system is a successful university system. The Heads of the Irish Universities regularly report that the Irish University system is about half the cost per student as an equivalent UK University”, the IFUT President said. Quoting a recent EU Report, he pointed out that Ireland is at the top of the ‘efficiency’ league table and stressed that:

• Irish graduates are the most highly employable in Europe;
• Irish universities have the highest graduation rate in Europe;
• Ireland has the highest percentage of graduates in Europe;
• Universities in Ireland, Finland and Sweden are given the highest ‘excellence’ rating by academics in other EU countries.

“The Universities are being ruined by the Government embargo and moratorium. Posts in Universities remain vacant as the Government refuses to allow their filling; as a result departments are struggling to maintain their courses.”

Hugh Gibbons concluded by stressing the breadth and variety of University research and the narrowness of the Department of Finance interest. “Universities carry out all kinds of research: research that is socially useful, that investigates the fundamental properties of nature, research into mathematics, into our history, languages, culture, education and even economics. The only research the Department of Finance is interested in, is research that would give rise to a commercial return and this mostly relates to Science and Engineering.”

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here. The President’s speech is available in full here.

“While recognising that there are some positives in the proposed agreement, the offer of a blank cheque for the renegotiation of staff contracts, with fundamental and far reaching implications for educational standards, is simply not acceptable,” IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, stated.

The Executive of IFUT also decided that the conditions of employment of its members will not be subject to aggregated vote by other unions on the proposed agreement and reserved the right to make whatever decisions are necessary if members’ jobs and conditions are put in jeopardy.

The matter will be put to a full ballot of the union’s members following its Annual Delegate Conference on 24 April next.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.

Mr Robinson warned that the drift in western countries towards commercialised universities and dubious quality providers must be resisted if universities are to preserve their function as reservoirs of research and innovation.

Danish speaker, Jens Vraa-Jensen, of Education International (EI), warned that universities cannot be managed according to market principles and at the same time fulfil their basic mission.

Mr Vraa-Jensen said: “The basic raison d’être for any private enterprise is to create profit for its owners. The purpose of a university is not profit but to spend money in the most appropriate way on teaching students and conducting research to develop the intellectual capacity of future generations and provide the society with new knowledge for future development and welfare”.

Mike Jennings, IFUT General Secretary, said: “Irish universities must not become the pawns of market forces and private speculators, who view education as just another source of profit and their students like customers in a supermarket”.

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here.

Biographical notes of the speakers and outlines of the themes of their talks are available on our seminar page.