EDUCATION:Securing external funding for research is a tough enterprise. Another layer of bureaucracy is the last thing we need
‘CRAZY, SOVIET-style state control” is how one Irish academic has described ECF2, the budgetary measure that threatens to unpick Ireland’s research infrastructure, according to leading figures in higher education. Since the Employment Control Framework (ECF) was revised and reissued to the universities and institutes of technology (ITs) on March 10th, there has been a flurry of dismayed blog entries, letters to editors and media contributions on the subject.
“In terms of my job I’m wondering what’s the point. Why bother?” says Prof Terry Smith, director of the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science in NUI Galway and a global figure on the research scene.
So what’s the problem? In 2009, a moratorium on recruitment and appointments was applied across the public sector, but a nuanced version was engineered for higher education. The ECF allowed institutions to fill essential posts as long as an overall reduction of 6 per cent in staff numbers was attained. A ban on promotions only applied to core staff with salaries funded by the exchequer.
In the dying days of the Fianna Fáil administration, a revised version of the ECF was signed off by the Department of Finance. Just as the new cabinet assembled, the universities and ITs were informed of the terms of ECF2.
This is how the former president of DCU, Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, described the new system on his blog:
“The ECF is now being extended to all employment and not just core staffing funded through the Higher Education Authority (HEA). It will now include even non-exchequer funded posts, so that universities cannot escape the framework by raising funds externally.”
All appointments and promotions, even those financed by overseas funding or private industry, must now be channelled through the Higher Education Authority. Where an appointment or promotion is deemed appropriate to procedure, the researcher will be liable to a 20 per cent pension levy to offset any potential pension costs to the state.
Prof Des Fitzgerald, vice president for research at UCD, is deeply concerned about the impact this will have on the universities’ capacity to raise non-exchequer funding for research. “How can this be in line with a smart economy agenda? From the point of view of the academic, there’s no incentive to stay in Ireland now. For businesses considering investing in research, the process has become too uncertain: they just won’t do it. Philanthropists won’t donate on this basis.
“High-level researchers tend to be recruited on a contract basis. They are an easier target for the Department of Finance than staff. If we have to agree a plan with the HEA around the totality of our research recruitment it will make us very uncompetitive globally. Securing external funding for research is a very tough enterprise. Another layer of bureaucracy is the last thing we need.”
Prof Terry Smith describes how ECF2 might affect his project at NUI Galway. “We’ve created 11 high-calibre research jobs in Galway. The group is funded by Beckman Coulter (a US medical device multinational) to the tune of €7.5 million over four years. We are into year three and there is potential to extend and expand the research. If that happens, both the RD and the manufacturing associated with the diagnostic instrument will remain in Ireland. If we are impeded from expanding this research by ECF2, Beckman Coulter will walk.”
According to Smith, the research fraternity is already so demotivated by salary cuts and promotion freezes that the sector has reached a “tipping point”. “If we can’t make decisions and push through applications with some level of independence we are going to be excluded from EU grant mechanisms. There are enough barriers in our way as it stands. This new layer of bureaucracy will slow the system way down. There is total fury in the sector about this.”
Smith remembers what happened in 2003 when a relatively minor economic shock prompted the Department of Finance to turn off the PRTLI funding taps. “A huge amount of damage was done in that period. We lost many top researchers, who wouldn’t stay because they couldn’t rely on our government. We can’t do this again. If we are stymied by limits on the recruitment and promotion of externally funded researchers, we are dead in the water.”
The HEA says it will not have a role to play in approving specific proposals. “The filling of research posts will be done in accordance with the programmes of various funders and the HEA will not have a role in deciding which projects proceed and which do not,” according to a statement from HEA director Tom Boland. “The requirement to submit proposals in advance to the HEA is necessary to provide assurance around due process. In the case of contract research staff and self-funded posts the higher education institutions must inform the HEA in advance of their plans to recruit and confirm that funding is in place.”
However critics, such as Trinity Professor of International Business Colm Kearney, says this is an infringement of academic autonomy. “ECF2 makes it abundantly clear that the HEA is intent on using Ireland’s fiscal crisis . . . to undermine the autonomy of the universities as embodied in the 1997 Universities Act, and to justify its existence by micro-managing the universities. This constitutes a direct attack on academic freedom,” he wrote on his blog.
The new Government has said little on the matter so far. A statement issued by the Department of Education and Skills earlier this month invoked the IMF.
“The . . . reporting requirements in respect of these posts reflects the fact that they are required to be included in EU-IMF reporting returns where they involve a future pension liability for the exchequer,” it read.
“This is a blunderbuss tactic,” says Smith. “It has none of the subtlety required to handle this strategically critical area for the Irish economy. It’s easy to blame the IMF but it’s not good enough.”
