David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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I am not going to name names, but in going through the list there is a reference to "counselling - €35,000", as well as to sums of €28,000, €25,000 and €12,000, all in the one year. Surely somebody could have looked at this issue and said it might be better to employ counsellors, that it would save money. The same is true of IT services. Although there is an IT section, for the academic year 2012-13 I see references to sums of €37,000 and €7,000 for IT support, as well as a reference to a sum of €12,000 for the management of websites. The same pattern appears for every other academic year. At what point does the HEA stop and recognise that the institute is spending all of this money on outside consultants? There are units in place in institutes with in-house experience. Why are they spending so much money in outsourcing and on outside reports when they could do more in-house and save the taxpayer money?