College boss extends her sick leave ahead of PAC hearing
Situation described as ‘highly unsatisfactory’
UNIVERSITY of Limerick president Kerstin Mey has extended her sick leave and will again decline to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) amid ongoing financial controversy at the college.
The University of Limerick (UL) has told the PAC that Ms Mey has ‘extended her period of absence’ after she went on sick leave when it was revealed the institution had paid significantly above the market price for 20 student houses.
The PAC have been told deputy president and provost Professor Shane Kilcommins has now been designated the functions of the chief officers of the university in Ms Mey’s absence.
Ms Mey contacted the PAC last month to say that she was ‘incapacitated’ and would not be able to attend the hearing scheduled for April 11.
This email to the PAC was sent minutes before Ms Mey emailed all staff at UL to admit that the university ‘paid significantly
‘There has been a pattern here’
above market price’ for 20 student houses in Rhebogue, near the campus.
The purchase has caused a €5.2million ‘impairment’ for UL, and has led to the Higher Education Authority (HEA) launching a review into the purchase, along with issues of general governance and culture of the organisation.
The PAC was forced to postpone last week’s hearing with representatives of UL due to the absence of Ms Mey, but have requested the university appear before them on May 9.
PAC chairman Brian Stanley said it was ‘highly unsatisfactory’ that the meeting with UL last week had to be postponed and said it was wasting ‘precious slots at the committee’.
Committee vice chairwoman Catherine Murphy said while she understood people can get sick, ‘there has been a pattern here’, with sick notes preventing hearings from taking place.
‘A significant issue arises and a person becomes unavailable because he or she is on sick leave,’ she said. ‘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 as he was ill in December.
The PAC has also received consistent sick notes from the former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes in the nine months they spent investigating the national broadcaster. Ms Forbes has never attended any hearing.
Sinn Féin TD and PAC member Imelda Munster said UL should be reminded that ‘the committee has the power of compellability’.
‘Maybe it (UL) does not care, but avoiding attendance does not show it in a very good light,’ Ms Munster said. She added that the university will have a chance to put forward their case in the postponed appearance on May 9. The PAC has requested that UL chancellor Professor Brigid Laffan and officials from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) attend the hearing, along with representatives from the Department of Further and Higher Education. CEO of the HEA, Dr Alan Wall, said in a letter to the UL chancellor last month that he found the university had ‘actively progressed the Rhebogue acquisition in the absence of a formally-approved property acquisitions policy’. A policy around property acquisition was recommended in a report by KPMG after UL paid €8.3million for the former Dunnes Stores building in Limerick city in 2019 when it later emerged the site had been valued at just €3million two years earlier. ‘The new acquisition policy was approved by the GA (governing authority) in June 2022, however the Rhebogue acquisition was substantially progressed prior to this approval,’ Dr Wall wrote in his examination.
Last May, Ms Mey assured the PAC in a tense hearing that UL were now following a new policy around acquisition of buildings and infrastructure.
The PAC was told by UL that a new property acquisition policy
The new policy was not in place
was used for the purchase of the 20 student houses at Rhebogue. However, the HEA has now found the new policy was not in place.
Dr Wall also said there was a ‘discrepancy’ between the purchase price approved by the GA, and the contract price agreed with the vendor.
UL’s capital funding program has been paused pending the outcome of the HEA/GA review.