This morning, representatives of Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ), the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), the Irish Research Staff Association (IRSA) and the Postgraduate Workers’ Organisation (PWO) appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to present aligned evidence on the urgent need for reform of research careers and funding in Ireland.
Speaking on behalf of IFUT, our General Secretary made a clear and unambiguous point:
The only way to guarantee fair terms and conditions for Doctoral Candidates is to recognise them as workers, grant them employee status, and require employers to engage in collective bargaining — whether locally or sectorally — with the appropriate trade unions.
Doctoral researchers are performing highly skilled, full-time research work. Yet many are still classified as “students”, leaving them without access to basic employment protections such as minimum wage coverage, paid sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, social insurance, pension contributions, and independent mechanisms for resolving workplace disputes.
Stipends remain below minimum wage and living wage levels and continue to fall in real terms. At the same time, postdoctoral and other research staff face deepening precarity, characterised by repeated short-term contracts, limited career progression, and excessive workloads.
Ireland rightly aspires to be a world-leading location for research and innovation. That ambition cannot be realised on the basis of insecurity and structural precarity. A sustainable research system requires:
Recognition of doctoral researchers as workers, with full employment rights.
Funding levels linked to living costs and realistic working time.
Measures to reduce precarity and enable genuine career progression.
Increased core public investment in higher education and research capacity.
A meaningful national framework for sectoral engagement with staff and their representatives.
IFUT remains committed to constructive engagement with policymakers to build a fair, sustainable, and internationally competitive research careers framework for Ireland.