UL's lossmaking student union must act urgently on poor financial planning, review says

The quality review of UL Student Life also found 'a lack of transparency around budgets and financial performance'

(Left to right) Síofra Foley, UL Student Life president, minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless, and Professor Shane Kilcommins at the opening of University of Limerick's €34m Student Centre in October last year. The cost overruns on the new student centre prompted an internal audit review which echoes the most recent review. Picture: Sean Curtin True Media.

An internal review of the University of Limerick's student union's processes concluded that "trust and transparency needed to improve" and that poor financial planning needed to be addressed as "a matter of urgency".

The quality review of UL Student Life found that the organisation, which posted losses of close to €1.6m in under three years to 2025, “lacks financial planning and effective day-to-day financial management processes”.

"There is a lack of transparency around budgets and financial performance which is having an impact on day-to-day delivery of service," the report noted. "This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency," it said.

The report, part of a series of seven-yearly reviews of the various facets of the university, was conducted in January 2025 and published the following May.

Many of its 20 high-level recommendations chime with the findings of an internal audit review of the union commissioned in September of the same year by the university, previously reported by the Irish Examiner.

That probe resulted from a request made by the union of the university to extend its student levy by six months in order to shore up €500,000 worth of cost overruns on the new €34m student centre at UL.

The internal audit found that significant deficits totalling €1.8m had built up within the union in the aftermath of its incorporating as a company limited by guarantee in 2022.

As part of its own recommendations, it stated that the university should "strengthen the reporting process for the quality reviews to ensure that key stakeholders are aware of level one recommendations which impact on governance and financial reporting issues".

UL agreed to that recommendation, saying that in future the provost and deputy president would be informed of any level one recommendations made within the quality reviews.

The 2025 quality review meanwhile called for the student capitation fee — Student Life's primary source of income — to be reviewed with "urgency" to ensure it had kept pace with the "growth" of the organisation.

It called for financial results to be presented at the student forum, a practice which had ceased after Student Life's incorporation, and that a policy to "better monitor" the reserves of the organisation should be instated.

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The review noted there had been a "loss in financial skills" within the organisation, and that the "financial health" of the union was "fragile".

Regarding those points, the subsequent internal audit review found that a lack of change in the capitation fee between 2008 and 2024 had contributed to the accumulation of losses within Student Life.

It further found that communication of Student Life's financial position to its board by the permanent staff unit had been inconsistent between 2023 and 2025, while the union's financial reserves of €1.5m had been entirely depleted during that period.

The internal audit also noted that the financial controller of Student Life had been made redundant in 2021.

A spokesperson for Student Life said the internal audit's findings had "superseded" some of the recommendations of the quality review, adding that in recent months the union had "prioritised work to strengthen governance, financial controls, and organisational policies and procedures".

A spokesperson for UL itself said that when the "circumstances of the financial and governance position within Student Life were brought to its attention" the college's Governing Authority "acted promptly" in commissioning the internal audit of the union.