The former president of the University of Limerick (UL) is being paid €175,000 while out on a year-long sabbatical after taking over a professorship position that has no department or course in place.
The Public Accounts Committee was told on Thursday that Kerstin Mey resigned as UL president last June and is now on sabbatical leave in her new position as professor of visual culture.
UL chancellor Brigid Laffan told the committee the university does not have a Department of Culture and there is no visual culture course in place either.
Ms Laffan added that Ms Mey would “not be short of things to do”. She said the role had been agreed on following a process of mediation “involving legal advice on both sides”.
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Ms Laffan said when an academic exercises a senior role in the university, it is “an absolute sectoral norm” that the person then has a sabbatical to “kick-start a research career and that’s what’s happening”.
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When asked how long was left on Ms Mey’s contract, Ms Laffan replied: “As of September 1st of this year, she has five years left, which does not bring her to full retirement age.”
Two property deals conducted by UL, including the acquisition of 20 houses for student accommodation at Rhebogue in Limerick city for €11 million in August 2022 and the former Dunnes Stores site, also in the city, for €8.3 million in 2019 were raised during the hearing.
UL president Prof Shane Kilcommins said the university had “significantly overpaid” for both assets, resulting in a cumulative loss of €8.27 million.
Ms Laffan said she had referred both transactions to An Garda Síochána and they were due to meet them next week.
The committee was also told that chief commercial officer Andrew Flaherty, understood to have been central to the purchase of the student accommodation at Rhebogue, has been placed on leave on full pay by the university pending an internal investigation into that transaction.
Ms Laffan said both deals did not “occur in a vacuum” and asked how it could be that despite a change in leadership, so many of the shortcomings were repeated.
Comptroller and Auditor General Séamus McCarthy said a key concern was that more than five years on, the university “remains without a clear development and funding plan” for the former Dunnes Stores site at Honan’s Quay.
“We have a professor earning €175,000 for a job that does not exist. We have a site in the middle of Limerick that was bought for €5 million over the valuation that is not in use and there is no plan or finance for it. And it sits there like a white elephant,” said Public Accounts Committee chairman Brian Stanley (SF).
“Out in Rhebogue, 3km from the university, we have 20 houses that were bought well in excess of double the market value of what houses were selling in the area. We could go on and on,” he added.
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