‘Inaccurate’ portrayal of college whose staff had ‘no work’

The president of Limerick Institute of Technology has accused the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee of portraying the college inaccurately when a recent meeting heard that LIT paid €627,000 to a number of staff members over a four-year period when it had no work for them.

Dr Maria Hinfelaar wrote to the PAC after Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy told a committee meeting last month that three LIT staff members who had joined following an amalgamation with the Tipperary Institute were “supernumerary”.

“They [LIT] have an approved level of staffing, and these are above that level of staffing, but in this case they actually have no work,” Mr McCarthy had told the meeting.