Limerick IT paid €627k to staff with nothing to do

Limerick Institute of Technology paid €627,000 to a number of staff members over a four year period when it had no work for them, it emerged today.

An incredulous Public Accounts Committee heard that LIT – which has run at a deficit in the last two years – took on the staff members following its amalgamation with the Tipperary Rural Business Development Institute, and is paying them a combined €216,000 a year even though they were once deemed ‘supernumerary’.

Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy yesterday told the committee that deficits have been incurred in each of the last two years at LIT, and that its governing body considers it still appropriate to prepare its financial statements on a going concern.