Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is incredibly frustrating. First, I agree that we should slot UL in at the earliest possible opportunity. If that is 9 May, then we should do that. I agree with the Cathaoirleachon on the list of people he proposes to invite. It is really important that we have the HEA in because this is not the first time this has happened. Obviously, the Cathaoirleach referred to the Dunnes Stores site. What jumped out at me from what the Cathaoirleach read out is that it is going to put a new governance arrangement or governance oversight in place. I would have expected the HEA to have already done that after the last debacle with the Dunnes Stores site and to have made sure that what happened then could not happen again. Indeed, I would have expected UL to have done so.

There is a similarity between what happened in this case and what happened with the Dunnes Stores site. There were weaknesses exposed in the context of getting valuations done and with the kind of oversight within the governing authority. Looking at the letter from the HEA on governance issues, it appears that the university actively progressed the Rhebogue acquisition in the absence of a formally approved property acquisition policy. That jumped out at me because that is exactly what was expected, that is, that there would be a formal acquisition policy. I believe we were actually given that assurance and now we are finding out that is not the case. It appears there is a discrepancy between the purchase price the governing authority understood it approved on 3 August 2022 and the contract price. In the case of the Dunnes Stores site, there was an absence of choice when it came to valuations at the time.

Another point that is made based on the document-----