Irish universities have urged the government to “immediately” address a shortfall in funding for staff pay of more than €70 million (£61 million) in the 2026 budget, warning that a multiyear plan to close the gap would result in “significant financial challenges” for institutions.

Speaking to ����Vlog, Michael Casey, director of finance and operations at the Irish Universities Association (IUA), said that universities “have been left significantly short on an annual basis” since 2022, after the government failed to compensate them for centrally determined pay increases for university staff.

While the government has “accepted that there’s a significant element of underfunding”, Casey said, it has proposed to address it over the next five or six years, “which isn’t great from our perspective, because it means you still have to carry those underlying operating deficits for each of the next years”.

“In our view, [the pay shortfall] needs to be addressed immediately in the core base funding for the sector, or else it just creates significant financial challenges for each of the next five or six budgets.” Compensating universities for pay increases, Casey added, could allow them to address widening student-staff ratios, which currently stand at 21 to one for IUA member institutions; in comparison, both the OECD and EU averages are about 15 to one.

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The IUA is recommending  in the 2026 budget, due this autumn, which includes an additional €45 million to “sustain momentum” in closing a government-identified core funding gap of €307 million.

The gap “is a legacy of the financial crisis in Ireland and the years of austerity that followed,” Casey explained, noting that the crisis coincided with demographic growth, “so we had funding being cut on one hand, and student numbers increasing on the other”. The pay shortfall has only increased the financial pressure on universities, he added.

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Closing the core funding gap, Casey said, “would allow universities greater capacity to operate on a more strategic basis, to take a longer-term view”. At present, “the funding situation is so difficult that it’s difficult to take that strategic view. The imperative is just to keep the ship afloat”.

To renew out-of-date infrastructure, the IUA is also calling for a €120 million per year “Research Infrastructure Fund”, based on the €1.2 billion Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) scheme that ran from 1998 to 2015.

A recent audit of research equipment, Casey noted, revealed that a third was more than 15 years old, while 59 per cent was more than 10 years old. “You have a situation where the pace of technological development is accelerating greater than ever before,” he said. “Graduates are going into the workplace and they’re faced with equipment that they haven’t experienced in their universities because they’re so out of date.”

Last week, the  in research, education and innovation over the next five years as part of the National Development Plan. Research and higher education minister James Lawless said the investment “allows us to move ahead with a new national research programme and to invest in the infrastructure that supports talent, science and discovery”, while it will also fund student accommodation and upgrades to further and higher education infrastructure.

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The IUA “very much welcomes” the development, Casey told THE, noting that the details of the plan have yet to be announced. “We’re optimistic that it will be a significant package of investment.”

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com