Richard Boyd Barrett presses Minister on IADT and €25,000 stipend

Debra Boyd-Barratt, you're up next. Chair, and apologies Minister, I wasn't here earlier to do stuff in the Dáil, but a couple of things, so first of all the partnership arrangement or merger, I don't know exactly how you describe it, of Dundalk and Queen's, now obviously I can see the attractiveness, Royal Ireland University and so on, but there are kind of concerns arising for workers in IADT in my area, there may be, although I haven't been talking to them in Dundalk itself, but certainly TUI members in the last remaining institute of technology which is in my area, as to where they go as an institution and where they go in terms of their terms and conditions, you know, because there's talk of a university status, but they're concerned, if you like, that the terms and conditions they have as being part of the IT sector, you know, don't get lost. And what's the pathway and whether the legislation, is the legislation that you're going to bring forward for the Queen's Dundalk arrangement, is it going to be an amendment to the technological universities bill and is it going to provide a blueprint or pathway for those in Dun Laoghaire when they move towards university status? So maybe some reassurance about, for them. Yeah, thanks very much Deputy and I know you're strongly interested in this and we discussed it in our questions last week as well, so I suppose I'm very aware of IADT's ambitions and I share them and support them, they want to achieve full university status, I think they're an exemplary institution in the creative arts, more broadly I'm on the cusp of commencing a strategy for the creative arts nationally, so how we can support IADT and other institutions and creative contributors within that landscape. I've met the TUI on it as well, so I've met both their executive and I attend a conference, I attend conferences every Easter and was there again quite recently, but I've met the executive as well, primarily around DKIT because that's the live one at the moment, but IADT, and I'm very much open and committed to working with the trade union in terms of how we develop the conditions and staff around us etc for both Dundalk and IADT. How we're doing at Dundalk and Queens, I actually published heads yesterday, which has got cabinet approval to go ahead with that, so the heads of bill are now out there, there's 46 heads, so we're doing it through an amendment to the Technology Universities Act, and the Technology Universities Act as I mentioned in our Dáil exchange last week, doesn't currently conceive of a single entity being elevated to university status, it does it through the mechanism of an aggregate, so MTU and ATU etc, SETU, what we've done is we've taken different ITs and put them together, and cumulatively then they, now there are other criteria as well, it's not just merging them together, they have to reach a certain degree of academic excellence, research intensity, course offerings etc, and other TUs have satisfied that and that's why they are where they are, we continue to support them, so things like the Technological Enhancement Fund, I wrote I think it was 76 million last year to the TUs to continue that ongoing building the base, supporting everything from systems to project management to all the sort of foundational steps in terms of helping them realise that university offering. It isn't conceivable at the moment that a single institution jumps up, so that's not contained within, so the amendments to the Technology Universities Act for Dundalk will enable it to partner with Queen's and there's a number of unique circumstances because it is a cross-border cross-jurisdictional entity as well, but that is how we're doing it to the TU Act, so I have the same thought processes you have definitely in terms of could we do the same thing for IADT, I think put simply the answer is yes, but not through these amendments, because these amendments are quite unique to the Dundalk Queen's situation, but I think absolutely they provide a template which we can then roll out further to look at the case of IADT, I think IADT are an exemplary institution and I think that one of the things we need to do is find out what is the definition. I hope to get another question in before my time runs out, but I hear that and I hope you will consult seriously with the workers, because they were annoyed about the fact that announcements were made without what they felt was an adequate consultation. I would say that it was quite a seismic historic announcement and we had to jump together, so cabinet and the boards of each institution all met at the same time that morning, so it was quite a unique situation. Okay Minister, I met with AMELAE and the Postgraduate Workers Organisation this week as well, and they are very concerned about the announcement about the Research Ireland, that postgrads and postdocs are now not going to go through the what is it called, the centralised scheme, but it's going to go through the colleges, right, through the colleges and the universities, and they're worried that that could threaten and put pressure on the €25,000 stipend, which by the way I still think isn't enough, it's lower than our European counterparts, but for those that did get it, that it could put pressure on that, because universities would say we'll have more postdocs, more postgrads, less of a stipend, that also less, potentially less sort of student autonomy in terms of the research, because it's going through the universities and they may decide we want more of these than that or whatever, rather than the centralised system. So can you give some reassurance that there's going to be no question of kind of undermining that stipend for postgrads and postdocs, the €25,000 and to more generally assess their concerns, because they are very concerned about where this is going. Yeah, no I'm aware of that Deputy, and so I suppose what I'd say is the intention, there's no announcement made on that, but there's a consultation underway, and Research Ireland as the preeminent funder, and although the new strategy says more than a funder, they're going to be more proactive in this space as well, and they're a very dynamic agency and a wonderful new CEO, Jeremy LeBron, driving them on, and I suppose just to give some assurances, one of the goals that him and I share, and I've actually called it out in the department's strategy, is that the pursuit of curiosity and knowledge is a public good in its own right, so you know I'm all for economic competitiveness and social resilience, but pursuit of knowledge should never be a disadvantage in its own right, because I think it is, I think we've had discussions on that before Deputy, so it's a public good and should be recognised in that way and worthy of funding regardless of the subject matter, you know, and academic freedom is core to that, and here's the €25,000 stipend, that's not going to be reduced, that's €25,000 through Research Ireland. Now I will say that that is these stipends that I can control and my department can control, we pay that out through Research Ireland. There are other PhD students who are funded from other funders, some of them privately, some of them self-funded, some of them through other state bodies, could be Tagus, could be HRB, or could be universities directly, and they don't come out of, I suppose, department funds, certainly not directly. I have asked my officials to write to the funders and make the case to them that we are, we now have a number of different levels within the funding system, and I've set a baseline of €25,000, I would appreciate if they would make a similar effort, and that's something that I'm engaged in correspondence with, but I don't have any direct, I suppose, powers over how other agencies choose to fund the PhDs that come within it.