Richard Boyd Barrett slams R&D giveaways, demands better PhD pay

Thanks. It's very good that we have this debate every year about the importance of science and the government to my mind pays lip service largely to the importance of science but does not then actually translate it in reality into backing science encouraging those who are working in the area of science research and development now what is my evidence for saying that well first of all there is the PhD researchers and the plight of about 10 to 12,000 PhD researchers who in recent years have felt compelled to organise themselves into a union through the postgraduate workers organisation some of their demands also articulated by unions in the third level sector like ifot and so on who have explained about the poverty that they suffer and it is really quite incredible and it's very important to note that our public universities are held together literally by postgrad researchers and by academic staff who are on part-time contracts on effectively if and when contracts living on very very low pay with almost no rights as workers in the case of PhD researchers literally no rights as workers but they hold together our universities our research our third level education system without them we wouldn't have those things but we treat them in a really shameful shameful way because of their campaigning the government was forced to raise up to it in most cases a minimum stipend level of 25,000 euro but that is still minimum wage for people who are highly educated and I'm supposed to be you know the causing edge they are the basis on which we educate our young people give them third level education and engage in the research that really counts both they live on minimum wage it's absolutely outrageous and that compares with our European counterparts where you are talking about more like 30 40 and some cases 50,000 euro for doing what are actually real jobs so we are exploiting the people who do the research who do the science and who teach our young people in third level in third level education I would say about 50% of those who work in universities are living in sort of precarity of one sort or another or not even recognized as workers and of course then there is just the barriers that we put in the way of accessing higher education more generally most notably third level fees and fees for postgraduate degrees all of which are barriers to people actually getting into higher levels of education into areas of research and innovation which will put us in the cutting-edge that we keep saying we're trying to put ourselves at and this is borne out in overall figures the average spend in Europe on the in the area of research is 3% we spend about 1.7 to 1.9 significantly lower this is the land of saints and scholars but not many saints in my opinion and we're definitely not looking after the scholars in this area but do we give money to some well the answer is yes you know because when we say things like get rid of postgraduate fees give them decent stipends treat them as workers get rid of third level fees people say oh sure you know where is that coming from the magic the magic the socialist magic money tree but we couldn't actually do that we cost it every year it would cost to get rid of the postgraduate and mature repeating students fees cost a hundred million to give a stipend to all PhD researchers of at least 30,000 euro a year would cost 225 million and to close the funding gap and the maintain existing level of funding would cost about 355 million and you think oh that's quite a lot of money but you know how much we give out to the big multinational corporations in research and development grants every year last year 1.4 billion euro that was up from the previous year of 1.1 billion euro or 400 million from the previous year of 700 million open over 400 million each year and so on that's not even examined in the budget and most people don't bother to look at tax expenditures which are the shadow budget in this country to shadow giveaways to the big multinationals already who are making absolutely astronomical profits and what are they researching I what are they researching well they might be researching I don't know you know iPhone version 15 for Bill Gates or Elon Musk or you know the billionaires the billionaires and trillionaires to further boost their profits which are going through the roof that's where the money is going money that should be going into the universities that should be going into getting rid of fees for students that should be going into our postgraduate researchers that should be going into our poorly paid precariously employed academic staff to actually boost this state's ability to engage in cutting-edge research and to put ourselves at the sort of higher levels of education that would really develop domestically our economy our own capacities no no no we're handing it out in another massive giveaway to the billionaires of this world who are largely located in the United States and are now the cheerleaders for Donald Trump that's what's actually going on and it's just ridiculous it's absolutely ridiculous so you know we could be the country not sort of Saints will never manage that one both we could do the scholars bit in a serious way if we redirected even half half of what we're giving away in tax reliefs the research and development tax release to a tiny group probably 10 15 big multinationals right and they are making so much profits the idea that they would all be running out of the country is nonsense because that's only one of the tax reliefs they're getting they're getting enormous tax reliefs again which we detail every single year in our budget intra-group transactions another tracks for tax expenditure 4.4 billion last year to the same companies losses they get tax breaks on the losses they make so we carry them forward and when they make profits they don't pay tax the next year 2.4 billion euro last year in total these big multinationals guess how much they get in tax breaks each year 22 billion euro it's flipping enormous it's a scandal and it's almost never discussed but before they pay any tax they get these tax loopholes so they don't actually pay 12 and a half or 15 percent or anything even like it or ordinary workers of course paying 20 percent or 30 percent or 40 percent of their income or more these fellows are paying six seven eight percent some of them paying as we know less than one percent but making astronomical profits so I say in a choice between enriching Apple Google Facebook already spectacularly profit pharmaceutical companies to research stuff that in the most part a lot of cases we don't need it all is of little benefit to us in some cases actually doing damage to our society wouldn't it be better to redirect that money towards our researchers towards our young people to access a higher level education towards our public universities to actually advance science research and innovation it's a no-brainer but it requires putting people and our society before profit thank you very much