Staff predict research policies will fail without better pay

THE Government’s ambitious research and science policies are doomed to failure unless research staff in universities are offered better pay and conditions, it was claimed yesterday.

The warning was sounded by the head of a research staff group at Trinity College Dublin, as global experts met at the university to discuss funding of high- innovation and high-risk research in Europe.

A central part of the Government’s Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation (SSTI) unveiled last June is the plan to double the number of researchers. But the TCD workshop heard there are serious issues facing the sustainability of this plan in the absence of real research career paths.