Universities overpaid staff by €8.1m since 2005, report finds

Universities have breached recession-era staff pay caps by over €8m since the end of the Celtic Tiger boom.

The major overspend has been detailed in a new Comptroller and Auditor General report alongside a series of financial transparency, pension arrangements, promotions and student “bad debt” concerns.

According to the report, between June 2005 and Feb 2011, Ireland’s third-level facilities repeatedly failed to adhere to Government-imposed staff pay caps.

In all, a massive €8.1m extra was spent on staff during the near six-year period, including €3.61m given out at UCD, €1.64m at UCC, €1.5m at Trinity, €448,000 at the University of Limerick, and €272,000 at NUI Maynooth.

While no action has yet been taken to address the repeated breaches, the State’&s spending watchdog said both the Department of Education and the Higher Education Authority are examining how to “re-allocate” the funds.

This may include attaching strict new conditions on how state funding for universities is used.

The detailed report & also raised concerns over the decision by Trinity College Dublin to ignore a government-imposed de-facto recruitment embargo set up to save money as the economic crash began.

Despite the repeated insistence of the HEA between Apr 2010 and early 2011 that staff could not be promoted, Trinity officials instead informed the body it was promoting 27 staff once the framework recruitment ban ended.

The cost involved, and whether it should be incurred by the taxpayer or not, is being examined by the HEA. Trinity was the only university which breached the recruitment embargo.

Meanwhile, the C&AG document has also identified financial issues in relation to the office of the president at Waterford Institute of Technology.

The C&AG noted that an audit had uncovered breaches of procedure and lack of economy, including the use of taxis instead of other public transport.

The former president, Kieran Byrne, was the focus of controversy last year when reports emerged a spend of over €130,000 on taxis between 2004 and 2011 — which he said was necessary to meet travel arrangements.

The C&AG noted that WIT had “taken appropriate steps” and put in place procedures and checks to examine expense claims.

Meanwhile, the C&AG report has also noted a recent upsurge in “bad debt” and “outstanding fees” issues among students, most likely due to the recession.

It further said that some universities, colleges and institutes of technology are paying additional pensions to staff who joined after 2005, despite not being required to do so.

The & report also revealed that DCU has bailed out two connected companies — UAC Management, which is in charge of the Helix theatre, and a non-profit entrepreneur support body set up by Ryanair founder Tom Ryan — in recent years.

The largest payment was €7.4m given to UAC in Sept 2010, and logged as a “contribution to the arts”.

* www.audgen.gov.ie