University of Limerick kept paying retired staffer

University of Limerick continued to make consultancy payments to a retired financial controller after he turned 60 and was also receiving a pension, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee has been told.

The university’s current director of finance John Field has written to the PAC to correct statements he made to it seven weeks ago about the payments. The former financial controller was one of two people to receive severance payments between €220,000 and €230,000, which had not been approved by the Department of Education, when they retired from UL in 2012.

The arrangements around severance payments, and how they are applied and decided, are to be examined in the review at UL announced last week by Education Minister Richard Bruton.