Cork Institute of Technology spent €65,000 to refute ‘defamatory’ claims

Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) spent more than €65,000 to investigate 196 allegations made by an anonymous whistleblower which it has described as “grossly defamatory”.

Earlier this year, staff at the college flouted college policies on expenses, a probe into the allegations found.

The auditors at KPMG found CIT broke procurement policies when it spent €20,000 on two staff portraits. CIT subsequently spent over €2,000 framing the paintings.

Representatives of the college are to appear before the Dáil’s spending watchdog this morning to account for the outlay and other irregularities in their budgets.

Documents and correspondence to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), seen by the Irish Examiner, show that two sets of allegations about mismanagement were raised in 2014.

“In relation to the first anonymous letter, there were a total of 175 allegations made. Many of these were grossly defamatory on the face of them,” college authorities will tell PAC members.

Cork IT president Brendan J Murphy is to state that the outcome of a KPMG independent review was that, of a total of 196 allegations, 35 were deemed to have insufficient evidence to allow further review, 102 required no further action as the allegations had been adequately addressed by the institute, and 59 were repetitious to other allegations and required no further action.

CIT was criticised by PAC members after they received a heavily-redacted version of the KPMG report. In a letter, Mr Murphy told PAC “no sleight” was intended.