Conference Allowance Policy Amended!
June 2025
Since 2022, The UCD Research Culture Team has been engaging in a series of dialogues with Technical Officers and related grades. As part of this engagement, we have discussed a variety of matters related to acknowledgement and facilitation of contributions to research by this group. One of the issues raised was the challenge encountered by these colleagues in finding funding to attend appropriate conferences and training courses. The group consistently voiced the lack of a specific conference allowance as a major barrier in providing them with opportunities for networking and upskilling through attendance at appropriate conferences, thus enabling them to contribute more fully to UCD's research efforts.
Accordingly, our colleagues in UCD Culture & Engagement reviewed the Conference Allowance Policy, and proposed amending it to resolve anomalies and make it more inclusive. We are delighted to report that the amended policy has now been approved by the University Management Team. The amended policy, The amended policy is now published at https://www.ucd.ie/hr/a-z/conferenceallowances/, and has an extended scope, applying (with amendments in bold) to:
- Faculty from Lecturer/Assistant Professor to Full Professor.
- Staff of Grade A02 or equivalent and above.
- IT staff Programmer II and above.
- Technical Officers and above.
This is a significant milestone and we are delighted to have been able to work with colleagues across the University on this development.