WATCHES AND PENS WORTH €70K BOUGHT BY UL
A TENDER process for more than €70,000 worth of gifts to UL retirees has been heavily criticised by a confidential internal audit.
A jeweller who was a member of UL’s highest decision making body supplied the luxury pens, and watches to the university. Medallions worth a further €35,000 were also procured. The amounts included VAT.
A full tender process was not engaged in due to time constraints according to the university’s HR department.
Instead a number of quotes from other suppliers were obtained – but only after HR director Tommy Foy had approved the tender from jeweller Tadhg Kearney, then a member of its governing authority board for 20 years.
UL told RTÉ Investigates three quotations were sourced before purchasing.
The confidential audit calls this ‘inaccurate’. It found that the Tadhg Kearney invoice for payment was dated prior to the receipt of any other quote.
It found that a letter to RTÉ on May 9 last ‘was not in its entirety a factual representation of the actual procurement process’. One of the medallions quotes was not on headed paper so the auditors were ‘unsure of its legitimacy’. It also criticised the non-declaration of interest from Mr Kearney, as it could give ‘rise to allegations of distortion in the procurement process… in favour of the winning supplier’.
Mr Kearney previously said UL advised him no conflict of interest existed. He has since left UL’s Governing Authority.