The details of the tertiary education package for Budget 2024 has received a poor welcome from University of Galway students, with the Postgraduate Workers Organisation (PWO ) calling it the ‘bare minimum’ and Student Union President, Dean Kenny, describing it as ‘welcome, but not enough’.
Details of the package were announced by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS ), Simon Harris, and Minister of State for Further Education and Skills, Niall Collins, on Thursday, October 12, revealing the new support schemes.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Minister Harris said, “One of the priorities for Budget 2024 is reducing child poverty. The expansion of supports to part time has the potential to transform how education is accessed by those most in need.
“Education has the power to transform lives, lift people out of poverty and break down cycles of intergenerational poverty.”
Reactions to PhD stipend increase
Part of this package includes an increase of €3,000 in the PhD stipend for researchers under the remit of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI ) and the Irish Research Council (IRC ).
Regarding the PhD package, Minister Harris said, “This is the third increase we have introduced for PhD researchers, and it goes a significant way to addressing the challenges they face.
“Ireland wants to be an innovation island and an island of talent. To do that, we must support our researchers. This increase will bring the stipend to €22,000 a year and will be effective from January.”
In June 2023, the Department released the initial report from the ‘National Review of State Supports for PhD Researchers’, in which one of the recommendations was to increase the ‘IRC/SFI funded stipends to an optimal target of €25,000 per annum’.
The enthusiastic announcement regarding the increased stipend did not, however, match the reaction from national postgraduate union, PWO, an organisation which counts a number of PhD researchers from University of Galway amongst its members.
In a statement issued by the organisation on Thursday, October 12, the PWO responded to the newly announced reliefs saying, “This situation is unacceptable, PhD researchers cannot be asked to continue working in these conditions. Therefore the PWO has begun a process of consultation with our members to decide our next steps.
“This includes the possibility of industrial action.”
Speaking about the proposed stipend increase, Student Union (SU ) President, Dean Kenny, said, “The increase to €22,000 goes against the Department’s own review, which stated the stipend should be increased to €25,000. This increase is not enough and it is a slap in the face really.”
With IRC/SFI PhDs making up fewer than 30 per cent of the country’s postgraduate population, the PWO say that the selective increase will widen the disparity between researchers.
“This will serve to widen existing pay inequality among PhDs working in the same offices and labs and doing the same work, some of which are paid as low as €9,000 a year.”
Expansion of Rent Tax Credit
As part of the tertiary package the Rent Tax Credit will, for the first time, be extended to parents who pay for rented accommodation for their student children under the rent-a-room scheme and for ‘digs’, with the payment being backdated to include the 2022 and 2023 tax years.
The increase of the Rent Tax Credit for people paying for private accommodation will be increased from €500 to €750 from January 2024, and is a credit that will apply to many students, one that Kenny describes as ‘welcome but not sustainable’.
“It’s welcome, but it’s not sustainable. It is not a real fix for the issue, or a solution. It is only a temporary fix. I would also question how it is going to be rolled out because a very large number of private accommodations are not registered with the RTB and only offer no contract tenancies. So, I question how that is going to work.”
The accompanying tax relief which will be introduced for landlords in 2024, which would allow landlords to claim between €600 to €1,000, has been criticised by Kenny, with the SU president saying, “We are not going to give out about people earning money, but we know for a fact that there are a lot of landlords that are absolutely taking advantage of tenants.
“For some landlords, they have their mortgage paid off and so everything they get in is profit. This is just more profit for them. It is more money into their back pocket.”
