UL president says college 'working closely' with student's union to rectify its financial issues

Shane Kilcommins told the university's staff it would be aiding Student Life as it undertakes 'significant governance and financial reforms' arising from an emergency internal audit probe of the union's finances

Internal audit review discovered the student's union had lost just under €1.6m in less than three years up until mid-2025.

The president of the University of Limerick has acknowledged the financial issues at UL Student Life and said the college "is working closely" with the union to rectify the problem.

Shane Kilcommins told the university's staff it would be aiding Student Life — the student union’s rebranded name since 2018 — as it undertakes "significant governance and financial reforms" arising from an emergency internal audit probe of the union's finances.

In a message to UL's staff body, Mr Kilcommins noted that, while Student Life was "outside the control of the university", nevertheless UL had "stepped in to assist, mitigate concerns, and help to put controls in place".

He added regardless of that intervention, Student Life "remains... an independent entity".

Previously, the Irish Examiner reported the university commissioned an emergency internal audit review of Student Life's finances, governance and processes after the union requested its student levy be extended for six months to cover cost overruns on its new €34m student centre.

This choice was noteworthy given Student Life, though funded by the university, is an independent legal entity and, as such, UL's internal audit function had no jurisdiction to review its performance.

That internal audit review, published last March, subsequently discovered the union had lost just under €1.6m in less than three years up until mid-2025.

UL itself remains under intense scrutiny from the Higher Education Authority (HEA), which has frozen the university’s capital programme funding since 2024 on the back of a series of financial controversies stretching back nearly a decade.

In his address to staff, Mr Kilcommins referenced the HEA's ongoing review of UL's governance, which was sparked by a financial scandal which saw the university overpay for 20 houses at Rhebogue in the city by €5m, the second instance of large-scale property overpayment in which UL was involved in just three years.

"We are and continue to make very significant progress in our ongoing constructive and very helpful engagement with the HEA," he said.

"There has been a very substantial body of work done to transform our institution, and that has been acknowledged and welcomed by the HEA," he said, adding UL was now "past the halfway mark in terms of recommendations that have been accounted for".

"This work continues, and the reforms will create a very stable platform that will allow us to focus on our core purpose — talent development and excellent scholarship and teaching," Mr Kilcommins added.

The president also made reference to UL's accounts for 2025, which he said "importantly... have received a clean, unqualified audit opinion from the Comptroller and Auditor General [C&AG]".

The C&AG Seamus McCarthy, the State's accountant, previously produced a special report into UL's property transactions, published in August 2024, which found in the case of the 2022 Rhebogue transaction, he had "found no evidence of proper, objective appraisal of the options of the kind that should have been available to decision-makers, including members of the university's governing authority, when they were asked to approve the acquisition".

He further found due diligence in terms of the planning aspects of the development was absent, and the governing authority was not informed planning permission for the houses had been due to expire in March 2023.