Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 October 2018

Public Accounts Committee

HEA Financial Statements 2017

9:00 am

Photo of Marc MacSharryMarc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I meant to wish Dr. Love well earlier and express regret that he is moving on. Wherever he is headed, the best of luck. A number of things arise from our last engagement that I want to put on record.

On that specific disclosure, in June 2018, the vice-president said that the person did not engage. In October 2012, the discloser requested a meeting with the president, the vice-president and the head of faculty. The meeting took place but only with the vice-president. In November 2012, the whistleblower-discloser asked for an investigator. The vice-president did not set terms of reference and was told that that would not happen. In 2013, the discloser wrote - I have seen evidence of all of this - to the chair of the audit committee, to the president, to the chair of the Cork Institute of Technology, CIT board, requesting a dispute resolution committee, which was turned down. In 2013 also, the whistleblower went to the office and met with each of the vice-president and registrar - now the president, vice-president of strategy, head of faculty and head of school. In 2016, the whistleblower's legal firm asked twice if the CIT board was made aware of the case. There was no response to that. In 2017, the discloser wrote directly to each board member without response and in 2017 also wrote to the then and current president without response.

It is important that that account was defined as not engaging last June by the vice-president. The reason I am bringing this up is that the HEA requested a report, which will come back and feed into its own conclusions. Many people are in the same positions now, or maybe have moved up a little, as was the position as far back as 2012, most notably the chair of the board and the vice-president, who are one and the same, and the president is a former vice-president. I hope, and I am putting it to the chairman of the HEA - Dr. Love is obviously moving on but hopefully the chairman will still be with us - that when this report emerges, that the HEA's consideration of it, without prejudice to what is going to be in it, will be is tempered by the fact that many of the participants in drawing up the report may well have been associated with the subject matter of the original disclosure in 2012, and indeed that of 2017. There is the X plus one that the chairman mentioned - a disclosure could be made against me, yet I am the party that this disclosure comes to; in the context of CIT, this does not exist. It is the Department or the HEA or the HEA or the Department. This should be borne in mind, also.

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