PAC rejects recommendations of report into UL spend on former Dunnes Stores building

UL informed the PAC  in March that it was not in a position to share the final report due to a legal action

It is understood that the recommendations have also been shared with both the Higher Education Authority and the Department of Further and Higher Education.

The recommendations of a long-awaited report into the University of Limerick (UL) have been rejected by the Public Accounts Committee, despite its membership repeatedly calling for sight of the report.

Consultants KPMG were commissioned last year to investigate the circumstances which led to UL acquiring the old Dunnes Stores building in Limerick city for €8m in 2019, despite it having been valued at just €3m two years previously.

In March of this year, UL informed the PAC that it was not in a position to share the final report — which was delivered to stakeholders last November — due to a legal action having been taken regarding the institution’s former chief operating officer Gerry O’Brien concerning the contents of the report.

However, UL’s legal counsel subsequently informed the university that while it could not share the contents of the report due to the matter being before the courts, it was in a position to share KPMG’s recommendations.

They were delivered to the PAC by the university’s professor Kerstin Mey on July 11. However, the PAC’s administration declined to accept that information “owing to the sensitivities attaching to that correspondence”, Professor Mey said.

Previously, the committee’s vice chair Catherine Murphy had stated that it was “very hard to see” how the PAC could proceed in its interrogation of UL’s finances until the report was made available.

It is understood that the KPMG recommendations have also been shared with both the Higher Education Authority and the Department of Further and Higher Education.

'Breach of fair procedures'

In Mr O’Brien’s proceedings against UL, he has alleged that adverse findings made against him in the KPMG report were made “in breach of fair procedures and natural and constitutional justice and/or exceeded the terms of reference set by the University”, according to Professor Mey.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that €3.7m in capital funding for UL, which had been withheld by the Department of Higher Education on foot of concerns over the university’s financial governance, has now been released.

In a letter to the PAC, the Department’s acting secretary general William Beausang said that having viewed the recommendations of the KPMG report — though not the report itself — and UL’s response to those recommendations, he is now “satisfied... that sufficient information has been made available by UL to allow this Department to lift the current pause on capital funding”.

The university had been twice penalised by the Department — in February and May of this year — for the ongoing issues regarding its financial governance.

On the second occasion, the institution said it had been unaware that the funding had been withheld before being contacted regarding the same matter by the Irish Examiner.