College aims to reclaim €120,000 from ex-president

Buying chick-lit novels and flying first-class while a colleague was in steerage form part of a court claim by Waterford Institute of Technology for repayment of €120,000 from its ex-president.

It is seeking reimbursement of money spent up to that figure by the president’s office under Kieran Byrne, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was told.

The emergence of extravagant spending in the former president’s office meant Mr Byrne was not given a second term, for which he was about to be nominated in 2011. But new details were revealed at yesterday’s meeting of an unpublished review of spending from 2009 to May 2011, including the use of college funds to buy books which included Mixed Doubles by Jill Mansell; Claudia Carroll’s I Never Fancied Him Anyway; Top Tips of the Baby Whisperer and a book on Audrey Hepburn.