Sir, – Una Mullally rightly notes the real difficulties in Irish schools caused by the fact that newly qualified teachers cannot afford rents or the cost of living in cities like Dublin (“We are losing teachers who cannot afford to live here”, Opinion & Analysis, July 11th).
However, your readers may be surprised to learn that the situation is even bleaker for staff at third-level institutions.
Up to 50 per cent of all lecturers in Irish universities are employed on short-term or temporary contracts, and as well as lacking job security, they can be paid less than €10,000 in an academic year: an obviously unsustainable situation which is currently driving many young academics out of the profession.
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Further and Higher Education recently issued a report recommending an urgent review of the issue of employment precarity in academia: if the Government does not take action to tackle this problem, it will pose a serious threat to standards of teaching and research in Ireland’s universities. – Yours, etc,
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Dr NIALL KENNEDY,
Department of French,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
