Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 October 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2022: University of Limerick
Special Report No. 117 of the Comptroller Auditor General: University of Limerick Property Acquisitions in Limerick City
9:30 am
Dr. Alan Wall:
I have only had the power to do a section 64 review since the end of 2022, so it is all new to us. What we are seeing in UL is nothing like we are seeing at the other two. In the other two, there is an accounting issue and an information issue inside the university. The UL case has longer legs. As we are going, we are developing the protocols for doing this work. In this case, we kicked off the section 64 review in March. We went down to the university to conduct interviews right across the university. We spoke at length to staff, students, administrators, academics and the governing authority. On the basis of that, we redrafted our terms of reference to include matters like a review of the advices that were given, a deep dive into the culture of the university as part of the section 64 review, and an examination of subsidiaries. That extended beyond Rhebogue and Dunnes Stores. In parallel with that, we commissioned other reports on the protected disclosures. The barrister will report to us in the next couple of weeks on how UL handled the protected disclosures. There is also a major deep dive by Mazars into the culture of the university. The HEA tried to do this in 2016 but did not get a chance to complete it. That report will come to us as well. We are looking back over 15 years of capital expenditure. We are fully using our powers to get as big a picture as we can.
No comments