PAC warns sick leave pattern can’t be allowed to continue

A PATTERN of sick leave and nonattendance at the Public Accounts Committee can’t be allowed to continue, it has been warned.

It comes after the failure of both University of Limerick (UL) president Kerstin Mey and former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes to appear before the PAC.

The Oireachtas committee has decided to postpone a hearing with UL until May 9 after Ms Mey went on ‘certified sick leave’ before her scheduled appearance.

PAC members want to question UL about it paying significantly more than the market price for 20 student houses near the campus in Rhebogue, leaving a €5.2million dent in the institution’s finances.

The Comptroller and Auditor General is completing a report into the matter, as is the Higher Education Authority, which is examining the acquisition as well as issues of general governance and the culture of the organisation.

PAC chair and Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley said it was ‘highly unsatisfactory’ that the meeting with UL last week had to be postponed and that it was wasting ‘precious slots at the committee’.

Committee vice-chair Catherine Murphy said she understood people can get sick, but noted that ‘there has been a pattern here’, with sick notes preventing hearings from taking place.

Social Democrats TD Ms Murphy said: ‘A significant issue arises and a person becomes unavailable because he or she is on sick leave. It cannot be a pattern that we allow to persist.

‘One way of doing that is to ensure that people know they will be back here again and again until we get this resolved.’

It is the third time in the past six months that the PAC has had to postpone a hearing due to a top official being sick.

The secretary general at the Department of Health, Robert Watt, caused a meeting to be postponed when he was ill in December. The PAC has also received consistent sick notes from Ms Forbes in the nine months it spent investigating the national broadcaster. She has never attended any hearing to give evidence.

Sinn Féin TD and PAC member Imelda Munster said that witnesses should be reminded that ‘the committee has the power of compellability’.