UL president promoted colleague to vice-presidential role without a formal competition 

Position of chief corporate officer at the university commands a salary of €177,000

UL President Professor Kerstin Mey has previously acknowledged that no competition was held for the appointment of a CCO. Picture: Sean Curtin

The President of the University of Limerick promoted the institution’s director of human resources to a vice presidential level role without a formal competition, the Irish Examiner has learned.

In October of 2020 Andrew Flaherty, the college's director of human resources since 2018, moved to a new role as chief corporate officer.

His role has since been renamed once more, to chief commercial officer.

UL President Professor Kerstin Mey has previously acknowledged that no competition was held for the appointment of a CCO, telling the Public Accounts Committee last May that she had acted “within my powers” in redefining Mr Flaherty's role, an action she described as a “recalibration” of senior management.

The role of chief corporate officer at the university is paid at the level of vice president, which commands a salary of €177,000, per the most recent salary scales published by UL.

However, under the university’s own procedures for the selection of roles at the level of dean and vice president, approved by the institution’s governing authority, all such appointments are to be “initiated by advertisement within the university”.

“As dean/vice president roles are both strategically and operationally critical to the University’s continued success, the president may also decide to advertise these roles external to the University of Limerick,” those procedures state.

The salary for a director of the institution meanwhile is paid at the level of ‘professor’ - though the role has no specific academic duties - and is paid at a level from €134,000 at entry level up to €170,000 at the highest point of the scale.

A spokesperson for UL said the university has “no comment to make on individual HR related matters”.

Professor Mey had discussed the appointment of Mr Flaherty to CCO at a meeting of the PAC in May, in which she claimed a recruitment process had “absolutely” taken place, but only in terms of Mr Flaherty’s initial appointment as director of human resources, two years prior to his promotion.

Asked for a “yes or no” answer by Wexford TD Verona Murphy as to whether or not the chief corporate officer job had been advertised, Prof Mey replied: “There was a recruitment process for that individual to his initial post in the university. The university has a range of policies available to it in the context of reassignment.” The president was sharply criticised in the aftermath of the same meeting for the perceived evasiveness of her answers, including on one occasion where she declined 23 times to directly answer a separate question by Ms Murphy, as to whether or not she had been provided with media training ahead of the committee.

UL recently formally elected Professor Brigid Laffan to the role of chancellor, succeeding Mary Harney, after the initial nominee Rose Hynes failed to be ratified by the body’s governing authority following a secret ballot in October. Ms Hynes subsequently resigned from the governing authority.

Speaking in the wake of Prof Laffan’s election, Prof Mey said the appointment represents “an incredibly significant appointment for this institution”.

"I see it as a great endorsement of this institution that our internal elections and call for external expressions of interest have resulted in persons of such eminence agreeing, pro bono, to support UL,” the president said.

The authority’s failure to ratify a new chancellor at the first time of asking had been unprecedented in the history of UL.