UL student union overspent budget by €1.6m in three years

The president of the union sits on UL’s Governing Authority, and has a standing remit to update the authority at each of its meetings. File picture: True Media

The student union of the University of Limerick overspent its budget by almost €1.6m in just three years, as questions emerge once more about the standards of financial governance at the institution.

The two companies comprising Student Life — the student union’s rebranded name since 2018 — ran cash deficits of €1.59m between 2023 and 2025, despite receiving overall income of €1.8m in 2024 alone.

Last year, the combined deficit run by the two companies — known as UL Students’ Union Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) and ULSU Trading Limited — was €336,000. In 2023, the deficit run was €744,000, and in 2024 it was €517,000.

A deficit of over €650,000 was recorded in the CLG's 2023 audited financial statements, representing its share of the €744,000 deficit for that year. The accounts, which were published in February 2025, showed the loss exceeded the estimate given to the union's board 16 months earlier by nearly €620,000, when a deficit of just under €33,000 had been projected.

No further financial reports were provided to the board of Student Life by its executive function — the 30 or so non-student permanent staff of the company headed by its general manager — for 22 months from 2023 to August 2025.

Annual budgets were provided to the board over that period, but each of those predicted an income surplus, as opposed to the large deficit actually accrued.

Separately, cash reserves held by the union totalling €1.5m were entirely depleted between 2023 and 2025 in order to cover the deficits incurred in those years. Cash reserves are typically held by businesses to cover the costs of emergencies or short-term expenses.

It comes as UL itself remains under intense scrutiny from the Higher Education Authority, which has frozen the university’s capital programme funding since 2024 on the back of a series of financial scandals stretching back for close to a decade.

Student Life, though funded by UL via a student capitation fee, is a separate entity from the university, with its own governance, accounts, and processes.

The president of the union sits on UL’s Governing Authority, and has a standing remit to update the authority at each of its meetings.

It is understood that no issues of financial concern were raised by Student Life with the aAuthority between 2023 and late 2025.

Neither the union's former general manager nor the two Student Life presidents who served between 2022 and 2025 replied to queries on this matter.

The Irish Examiner previously reported that the Governing Authority commissioned an emergency internal audit review of Student Life in September 2025, after the union requested an extension of its student levy to pay for close to €500,000 worth of unexpected cost overruns attributable to its new €34m student centre.

A spokesperson for Student Life did not directly address the issues surrounding the union’s reserves or its underestimated deficit for 2023.

In a statement, they noted that Student Life’s “financial reports are published on our website”, a facility which "provides students and the wider community with open access to information on UL Student Life's income and expenditure, supporting transparency and accountability”.

“UL Student Life are committed to ensuring that it continues to effectively represent, support, and advocate for students, both now and into the future,” the spokesperson said.

A UL spokesperson said that Student Life is “an independent organisation... responsible for its own financial reporting and governance”.