Thousands of scientists across the Republic of Ireland winced when they opened their January payslips. As a result of government measures announced on 9 December, their salaries had been slashed by as much as 15%.

The cuts are part of emergency financial measures in this recession-plagued country, where the deficit is expected to mount to €22 billion (US$30 billion) this year. Decreases in tax revenue and an expensive government programme to recapitalize the banks are largely to blame.

In an effort to stabilize public budgets, the federal government passed legislation to reduce the public-sector pay bill by €1.3 billion. State-sector salaries, including those of more than 4,000 scientists employed by universities and research institutes, have been reduced by 5–15%, depending on their gross earnings.

Credit: M. KULKA/CORBIS

The cuts affect researchers employed on permanent and temporary contracts alike, regardless of where their funding comes from. But, fearing cancellation of contracts, the Irish Universities Association (IUA), whose members include more than 20 universities, colleges of education and institutes of technology, has urged the government to exempt several hundred contract researchers funded by external grants such as those from the European Union (EU) and other foreign funding bodies.

The average postdoc in Ireland earned about €40,000 in 2009. EU stipends start at around €30,000 (see Nature 457, 750–751; 2009). Before the cuts, the base salary for a Marie Curie fellow in Ireland was about €61,000, some 20% above the EU average. Costs of living have dropped considerably over two years of recession, with rents down 40%.

Even so, scientists are upset by the salary reductions. “It's quite frustrating that I got a pay cut before I even started working,” says Liam Shiels, a 28-year-old research assistant at University College Dublin's School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science.

Shiels, a British in vivo imaging technician, moved to Ireland from a UK health-care company in January. His nine-month term in Dublin is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, a government-funded grant-giving agency.

He signed a contract on 7 December, but by the time all the details were sorted out in mid-January, his salary for the nine-month period had dropped from an initially agreed €31,000 to just below €29,500.

“What's particularly frustrating is that I signed my contract just two days before the law passed,” Shiels says. “Else, I would have tried to negotiate a higher salary in the first place.” All salaries are affected regardless of when the contracts were signed.

Meanwhile, 200 or so young scientists funded by the EU's Marie Curie mobility programme, and 25 or so funded by the European Research Council, the UK Wellcome Trust, the US National Science Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health, should be exempted from the salary cuts and get their January reductions reimbursed.

“On legal grounds, there can be no deduction in the salaries of externally funded scientists,” says Conor O'Carroll, director of research at the IUA and national Irish delegate to the Marie Curie programme. The IUA has explained the situation to the ministry of finance, and expects the rules will be revised.