‘Extreme oversight’ of UL follows €5.2m overspend

THE University of Limerick has been placed under the ‘extreme oversight’ of the Higher Education Authority as it investigates an ‘alarming’ multimillioneuro overspend on 20 student houses.

UL paid ‘significantly above market price’ for the properties in 2022 and will have to absorb €5.2m of the overspend.

The chancellor of UL, Professor Brigid Laffan, said that the university is entering a stage of ‘extreme oversight’ with officials from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) expected on the campus later this month.

Professor Laffan addressed staff at a ‘packed’ UL concert hall yesterday saying the HEA contacted her earlier this week to outline its ‘deepest concerns in relation to the governance and culture of the institution’.

The HEA said it was writing to UL about the review taken by the governing authority around the overspend on 20 houses, as well as a previous review into the purchase of a Dunnes Stores site for €8.3m without a formal valuation in 2019.

UL management are due before the Public Accounts Committee on April 11.

However, UL president Professor Kerstin Mey cannot attend after she told the committee last week she is ‘incapacitated’, just minutes before she sent a staffwide email revealing that €5.2m was lost on the controversial purchase.

Ms Mey attended a conferring ceremony at UL earlier this week, but was confirmed to be on sick leave from Wednesday.

A total of 20 properties in Rhebogue, just over 2km from the main UL campus, were bought last year from a private developer for more than €11m, which equates to around €550,000 each before stamp duty.

However, a review of the purchase has revealed that the university paid significantly higher than the market value and should have expected to pay around €6.2m or an average of €312,000 apiece.

Professor Laffan, who is understood to have landed in Ireland in the middle of the night, led the meeting and was the only member of those running UL to speak to staff. She also asked that staff members making interventions at the meeting refrain from using names of management in their speeches.

She confirmed that Professor Mey is on sick leave and that the deputy president, Shane Kilcommins, will be acting president in her absence.

‘We weren’t allowed to mention anyone by name,’ one source at the meeting told the Mail.

There were instead ‘vague calls for consequences and accountability but who we’re talking about is pretty obvious’. Professor Laffan told staff that she was ‘alarmed’ on discovering the ‘very serious governance problems’ around the purchase of new student accommodation.

The meeting went on for well over an hour and there were a number of contributions from staff members including some high-profile professors at the university.

There were multiple rounds of applause for contributions from staff who were extremely angry with the emergence of another controversy at the university, and called for more accountability from management.

One source said that faculties in the university are struggling to get necessary expenses to allow them to their job due to the strict

Management due before the PAC

Students asked if services to be cut

procurement and expense procedures, while €5.2m was lost on the property purchase.

Student representatives at the meeting asked whether student services would be cut due to the €5m deficit, and Professor Laffan said she couldn’t guarantee this as she was not in control of UL’s budget.

The president of UL confirmed earlier this year that a fresh valuation on the former Dunnes Stores site in Limerick city centre showed it was worth €5.4m. The university paid €8.3m in 2019.

It had been valued in 2017 for just €3m.