The person correcting your coursework or exams is not your lecturer. It’s likely a postgraduate researcher. They are also the one running your tutorials, demonstrating in labs, and answering questions before deadlines.
While this work keeps courses running, it often happens quietly alongside their official side-gig of a minimum 40-hour research week. What’s surprising for anyone who finds this out is that the postgrads are paid below minimum wages for university level work.
The cost of delayed reform
Pay has been a point of contention for more than a decade. From 2012, the national PhD stipend remained fixed at €16,000 per year, even as rents and living costs rose sharply.
For postgraduate researchers trying to support themselves on that income, full-time study became at first difficult and then increasingly impossible to sustain.
Incremental increases followed only after sustained campaigning by postgraduate researchers, representative bodies, and unions, including the Postgraduate Workers’ Organisation (PWO) and Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ).
The stipend finally rose in 2021, and reached €25,000 by 2025. Each increase was welcomed, although campaigners rightly argue they came too late and failed to keep up with rising wages.
When broken down hourly, the gap becomes clearer. Based on a standard 40-hour working week, a €25,000 stipend equates to roughly €12.33 per hour. Ireland’s national minimum wage rose to €14.15 at the start of this year.
Image 1. PhD income versus stipend (Western Europe). Precarious work in academia: let the researchers do the research
That’s €1.82 per hour less than anyone else in the country. Unlike employees, postgraduates do not receive sick pay, holiday pay, PRSI or pension contributions.
What’s even more hurtful is that postgraduates must immediately take their stipend for living expenses and pay whole portions back to the university to cover fees and other costs.
Life on a PhD stipend
“It took years of mobilisation just to reach €25,000” said the President for the PWO – Galway branch, “That figure didn’t appear overnight. It came after surveys, protests, and repeated engagement with government and institutions over many years. The problem is that each increase arrives only after the goalposts have moved. Postgraduates were paid below the minimum wage, and when a pay rise is announced, they find that they are still being paid below the minimum wage.”
Image 2. PhD Stipend to Living Cost Ratio. AMLÉ.
For some researchers, the consequences are immediate. A postgraduate in the College of Medicine at the University of Galway said they repeatedly relied on local food banks during their studies.
“You don’t expect to need food banks while doing a PhD when you’re arriving” they said. “But at times it was the only way I got through the month and stretching it can only go so far.”
Another postgraduate described postponing medical and dental care because they could not afford the upfront costs. Even minor, unexpected expenses, they said, could push an already tight budget into crisis.
“I have no room for a random expense,” they said. “One expense can mess up months of budgeting.”
Teaching on top of everything
Teaching remains a particular pressure point. PhD researchers are widely employed as tutors, demonstrators, and assistants across Irish universities.
While these roles are essential to undergraduate education, contracts are typically short-term and hourly paid to the postgraduate. Preparation, marking, and administrative work often extend beyond agreed hours and go unpaid for months at a time.
A postgraduate at the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Galway described the situation as contradictory, “You’re told your research is your priority,” they said, “but you’re also relied on to keep tutorials running. The work is real, but the pay isn’t.”
A system at a crossroads
Student representative bodies have echoed these concerns. Both PWO and ÁMLÉ have called for clearer employment status, improved pay structures, and national standards for postgraduate working conditions. ÁMLÉ has argued that postgraduate researchers are integral to higher education and should not be treated as a low-cost labour pool.
Image 3. PWO – Galway branch picture.
Cost-of-living pressures have intensified the issue further with many postgraduates being ineligible for social welfare supports due to their stipend status.
International PhD students typically also face visa restrictions that limit outside employment, alongside with costly residency permit bureaucracy.
Universities have pointed to national funding frameworks as limiting their ability to act independently, noting that stipend levels are governmentally set.
In practice, however, universities still make decisions about which programmes to offer and renew. The University of Galway, recently renewed scholarships that provide substantially lower stipends, such as the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) scheme, extended in January 2026 despite offering €16,000 per year.
Image 4. University of Galway and the Central South University signing research partnership, January 2026.
Critics also argue that institutions benefit significantly from postgraduate labour while remaining distanced from responsibility for pay and conditions. Universities charges Postgraduate tuition which can cost between €14k – €28k per year.
Underpaid but not Under-mobilised
As postgraduate numbers continue to grow, scrutiny of how the sector is sustained has intensified. For many researchers, the debate is no longer about whether PhD work counts as work, but why it continues to be paid below the legal minimum.
Across much of Europe, postgraduate researchers are already recognised as workers, with access to basic employment rights that remain absent in Ireland.
At the same time, ÁMLÉ and several student unions have moved to establish full-time postgraduate officer roles, recognising that postgraduate cohorts now number in the thousands and face distinct academic, financial, and employment-related challenges.
Within the University of Galway Students’ Union, postgraduate representatives have similarly been pushing for the creation of a full-time postgraduate officer to represent the university’s more than 5,000 postgraduate students. Arguing that the scale of the role can no longer be met through part-time representation alone.
This shift has been accompanied by closer coordination between representative bodies. A memorandum of understanding signed between ÁMLÉ and PWO marked a commitment to joint engagement on pay, conditions, and employment status, linking student representation with organised labour unions.
Image 5. Representatives from PWO and ÁMLÉ at the signing of the memorandum of understanding, December 2025.
Campaigners argue that this growing coordination has begun to change how postgraduate issues are raised, both within universities and at national level.
Whether the €25,000 stipend represents progress or merely a pause remains contested. What is clear is that postgraduate researchers are more organised than ever, and less willing to accept a system that relies on their labour without fully recognising its value.
Daniel McGonigle is a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Galway and the Postgraduate Officer for the Students’ Union. He’s passionate about highlighting the importance of student activism and representation. When he’s not advocating for postgraduate rights he’s in the lab working on his COVID and muscle research.