Re-employment ban 'will drive away researchers'

A MEASURE introduced by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform could force thousands of young researchers to emigrate. This will damage the Government’s efforts to build a knowledge economy here, representative bodies for researchers claimed yesterday.

The measure relates to public service employees who accept a slightly higher ex gratia or “enhanced” voluntary redundancy payment when leaving.

Acceptance of the enhanced payment excludes the recipient from working in the public service for two years. Taking the lower statutory redundancy does not block re-employment.

This change, introduced by the department and circulated to other departments at the end of June, will cause particular problems for researchers working on fixed-term contracts, said Dr John Walsh, who chairs the Irish Research Staff Association.

Dr Walsh, who only heard about the change on Tuesday, said it would have far-reaching implications. “It is a grossly unfair measure and is particularly damaging to researchers because they already have precarious employment conditions,” he said. It would also impede the developing knowledge economy.

About 4,000 young researchers are working in university laboratories here. “The vast majority of the researchers are vulnerable to redundancy,” he said.

They work under short fixed-term contracts and have to accept redundancy as they wait for contracts to be renewed or new ones to arise.

The possibility of enhanced redundancy arose as part of the Croke Park agreement, said Mike Jennings, general secretary of the Irish Federation of University Teachers. The federation has repeatedly had to take cases related to enhanced redundancy to the Labour Court to force payment, he said.

He believes the department’s measure was a response to this, with a clause specifically stating that public servants accepting enhanced redundancy “will not be eligible for re-employment” by any public service body for two years.

“Its most serious impact is going to be on researchers,” Mr Jennings said. Effectively it was an “emigration clause” that would force them to leave Ireland to find work abroad.

The measure could also affect teachers, he said. School teachers tempted to take the higher redundancy would be excluded from re-employment for two years. “They are effectively being asked to give up their careers,” he said.

For this reason he and the heads of other teachers’ unions, the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, have written to the Department of Education and Skills asking for a meeting to discuss the “serious concerns” felt by all four unions.

The Research Staff Association has called for the plan to be withdrawn. “It is senseless as well as unfair. It is a classic false economy by the State,” Dr Walsh said.

It amounted to involuntary redundancy, said Dr Gordon Dalton, based at University College Cork and chairman of the European Research Staff Association. “Researchers don’t take voluntary termination of their employment.”

Making the enhanced payments was only justifiable if they secured a long-term saving on the public service pay bill, a spokeswoman for the department said yesterday.

The limitation was placed on the ex gratia payment to secure savings. It would be “inappropriate” for a recipient to then secure employment in the public service afterwards.

“Nor would it be fair on other individuals competing for the limited number of recruitment places in the public service,” she said.