Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 June 2017

Public Accounts Committee

University College Cork and University of Limerick: Financial Statements

9:00 am

Mr. Diarmuid Collins:

The rest comes from students themselves, the research industry, international students, commercial income and so forth. The university underpins the borrowings. We leased the campus back. The asset was leased back to IMI, so now we in UCC have the asset and it is leased back to IMI. The lease payment, the income we get in UCC then goes to pay the borrowing that we have back to Ulster Bank. We bought the campus and leased it back and the lease payment from IMI into UCC, which is new income that we have never got before, goes to service those borrowings.

For us, if we compare where we are now and where we were pre the acquisition, the university has an asset that is appreciating - 13 acres at a cost of €20 million. That is the reality. Other recent sales of assets adjacent to Sandyford show it is worth arguably more than that. So we have an asset that is appreciating. We have a business that provides executive communication that we did not have before, and we have a better ability to deliver on lifelong learning, which was one of the key objectives set out for the university in the Universities Act. Our ability to do that now, in particular in the business space, is far better enhanced.