Former UL president being paid €175k but has no course to teach, Dáil committee hears

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41488646.html

Posted by Willing-Departure115

22 Comments

  1. Willing-Departure115 on

    Bike shed personified.

    Step one: Screw up Dail appearances on financial mismanagement so badly you need to go on sick leave.

    Step two: Resign. By which we mean, take up a €175k post we invent for you.

    Step three: Look for something to do while you wait for your defined benefit pension.

  2. The amount of taxpayer money being pissed down the drain in Ireland is just off the charts. We need a full review/reform on how we approach governance and accountability in this country because this is just insane.

  3. Apprehensive_Ratio80 on

    Don’t forget they are also investigating the €11million purchase of 20 houses by UL, estimated to be worth a total of €3 million recently as well.

    UL in serious 💩💩💩 lately

  4. ImpovingTaylorist on

    You get this a lot in accademia.

    Very smart people who think they have exceptional talents because they are extremely good in one very narrow subject. They do not take advice or criticism well at all, and when they get elevated to a position of power they have no skills to actually do the job. Their people skills are so bad they often have no team around them because they spent their lives thinking they were above it all.

    The pressure comes on, and they can’t handle it.

  5. ApprehensiveShame363 on

    There’s quite a few academics that do little to no teaching of undergrads, but do a lot of research and mentoring of PhD students.

  6. EFbVSwN5ksT6qj on

    University of Limerick and University Hospital Limerick are absolute basket cases. In fact, the entire city is a basket case.

  7. Academic_Noise_5724 on

    I used to work in the higher ed sector. The amount of mismanagement in UL is next level

  8. EFbVSwN5ksT6qj on

    This is what they do to move useless executives aside after a scandal. The whole ‘re-entering academia’ thing is a charade to buy her compliance whilst they replace her with a new President. Otherwise, they would need to go through a HR discplinary process to remove her as President, which would take years, they wouldn’t be able to appoint a permanent replacement in the meantime, and she would still remain on full-pay throughout that disciplinary process.

    I really hope the Garda investigation can unearth why UL decided to pay so much for a group of houses.

    Remember UL has always been hugely funded by philanthropic donations and it seems a really inefficient administrative structure was allowed to develop.

  9. How is this a surprise?

    Every time there’s anything about workload in the Public Service, half the PS people on here are complaining they’re buried in work and depressed and the other half admit to doing fuck all.

    It’s a joke. Billions wasted with this shite.

  10. At least she’s not president any more. It’s way too hard to fire someone for cause in Ireland.

  11. EnvironmentalShift25 on

    Is it even possible to be properly demoted in the civil service or academia in ireland? Or is it always just a move ‘sideways’ on the same pay no matter how badly you screw up?

  12. What’s even more funny to me is that she was one of a whole rake of new VPs that Desmond her predecessor installed in UL when he took up the president role before her. Her and the others (6-8 people) were directly appointed to serve as vice presidents under Des himself all while displacing the original 1 vice president and creating a new layer of senior management in between the President and the Deans of each school.

    She would not be in UL at all but for Desmond appointing her first as VP.

    Unsurprising to see UL continue the trend of leadership being untrustworthy around money and I bet Desmond has also a hand in the root money issues surrounding purchasing they are currently facing.

    So to date, that’s 3 presidents (Don Barry, Desmond Fitz and Kerstin Mey) in UL concurrently that couldn’t be trusted to manage the place with a bit of respect towards their position and towards the money given to them by the government & students.
    Wasting money on ridiculous things like a kitchen refit for relocating staff members or Don Barry wasting money on a going away concert for himself.

    I was a student there during Don/ Des tenures and had no faith in the leadership then and now.

  13. Charming-Potato4804 on

    Could they not establish an MSc in Pulling The Piss.

    She could lecture on that!

  14. This is a ridiculous line to try and push. University staff are not all teachers. Many research and supervise PhD students.

  15. There is enough actual mismanagment going on at UL without needing to go with misleading stuff like this which makes it seem like she’s being paid despite not working – sabbaticals are a normal part of most academics’ careers and they involve just as much work as an ordinary teaching term.