Senior UCC officer seeks lifting of freeze on pay

A SENIOR officer of University College Cork is seeking the restoration of payment of additional allowances which the college has not been sanctioned to pay him.

Diarmuid Collins was appointed as UCC’s bursar/chief financial officer in 2005 and was told he would be paid just over €144,000, equivalent to 120% of a professor’s salary. This was in accordance with the university’s pay arrangements at the time, an Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) heard yesterday.

But correspondence in 2006 from the Higher Education Authority and theDepartment of Education made clear to UCC management that staff could only be paid at rates approved by the Minister for Education and Minister for Finance. A freeze was then put on increases due under national wage agreements to the pay of Mr Collins and a number of other senior officers of UCC.