UL chancellor defends college over Dunnes site valuation

The University of Limerick paid €8m for the former Dunnes site on Sarsfield Bridge, just two years after it had been valued at €3m

Dunnes Stores, Sarsfield Street, in Limerick was brought by the University of Limerick for €8.3m. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

The chancellor of the University of Limerick (UL) has said it is not “fair” to compare a previous valuation of the Dunnes Stores site in the city of €3m with the €8.3m it was eventually purchased for.

Mary Harney told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the €3m valuation from 2017 was a “desktop valuation... for internal purposes only” aimed at placing the Dunnes site, at Sarsfield’s Bridge in the city, on the derelict sites register with the purpose of having it acquired by the local authority by compulsory purchase order.

“The point I make is that the €3m cannot be compared with the €8m, it would not be fair or right to do so,” Ms Harney said.

She explained that in April 2019, Dunnes had approached UL asking whether or not it was interested in purchasing the site, and that the university’s 29-person board had been informed the university had made an opening offer of €6.5m, against Dunnes’ asking price of €10m.

She said the university’s former president Des Fitzgerald and his deputy had been in charge of the negotiations.

Ms Harney added that while the board had been “excited” to acquire the Dunnes Stores site, the governing authority had been assured that independent valuations had been provided by both sides during the expedited negotiations for the deal.

When it became clear in the wake of the purchase that no written valuation could be found, the board commissioned an investigation by consultants KPMG.

“We always wanted to get this site, it’s an iconic site, we were excited to get it and there was great enthusiasm, but that didn’t take away from our responsibility to use our critical faculties,” Ms Harney said.

While that KPMG report was delivered to the university’s president last December, it has not been published due to a legal challenge, a fact which PAC chair Brian Stanley declared to be “intolerable”.

Ms Harney said the intention had been to publish the report in February. She said the current governing authority would cease to exist this coming November, and it would be “unconscionable” should the board not have sight of the report it had itself commissioned before then.

In fact, Professor Kerstin Mey, the president of the university, was the only person at the committee who has actually viewed the report to date.

“There is nothing we want more than to see this report and to get it published,” Ms Harney said, adding that point applies particularly to the members of the board who attended the meeting which approved the Dunnes purchase on April 5, 2019.

UL is currently subject to   €3.7m in funding having been withheld by the Department of Higher Education due to ongoing concerns over its financial governance.