Call for change in legislation to retain graduates

There is concern among the scientific community that current terms of employment for graduates may force them to emigrate

A THIRD of Ireland’s science postgraduates may end up having to pursue their research careers abroad unless changes can be achieved in their terms of employment.

Their departure would represent a wasteful loss and could also undermine efforts to achieve a knowledge economy here. Young postdoctoral researchers are a mainstay of our scientific research system, yet most of them struggle along with one- and two-year contracts that give them no long-term security.

Their concerns were discussed last Friday at a meeting of the Irish Research Staffs Association. “It was the first meeting held by researchers for researchers,” said association president Dr Gordon Dalton, an engineer based at University College Cork.

“Researchers at the moment are a very marginalised group and have had no part in policy decision making,” he says. “We are part of the university revenue-making process and part of the smart economy and yet we are never consulted on where we are going or how our careers will progress.”

There are 3,500 postdoctoral researchers working in Ireland, according to the Irish Universities Association and the research scientists’ association has 2,000 on its books, says Dalton.

Policy decisions made several years ago to double the output of PhD graduates continue to add to these numbers. Yet the great majority of these researchers rely on short-term contracts and have no clear career progression.

The assumption was that up to 80 per cent of science graduates would find jobs after graduation in industry, but this has not proven to be the case, Dalton says.

Only 20 per cent have moved into industry and budget cutbacks make it difficult to remain within the university context. “The universities say they don’t have the money to keep researchers on contracts,” he says. “Industry is not taking up graduates.”

Ironically legislation introduced to protect contract workers from exploitation is making things more difficult, he says.

The Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 restricts to four the number of years that a worker can remain on contract before he or she must be given a permanent position.

“Unfortunately it has worked against us,” he says, because research projects tend to run over long periods and yet they can’t stay to see them completed.

The universities can’t keep renewing contracts because of the Act and so the young researchers get disconnected from the project, with emigration a likely outcome, he adds.

Dalton estimates that by 2012 Ireland could lose a third of its science graduates, a huge loss to the State in terms of brain-power and investment.

Things are not helped by the revised Employment Control Framework, which seeks to rein-in employment in the public sector. The Higher Education Authority oversees it across the universities and it has assured them there will be no limit to the numbers of contracted researchers provided the funding is there to support them.

Contracted postdoctoral researchers remain dubious, however.

“It will need more than this from the HEA and the Department of Education to clarify the issue. It is a very worrying piece of legislation,” Dalton says.

Both the UK and the US research scientists’ associations were represented at last Friday’s meeting and one resolution was to pursue the idea of a European association.

Dalton travels to Brussels next month to meet the European Network on Research Careers to see if such an association can be created.