Ms Mary Harney:

It would be helpful to have a little perspective here. On 5 May 2020, the president informed me he was going to resign because he said the virus impacted on his ability to serve the university. I sought a date from when that would take effect because we were in the middle of a pandemic. I pay tribute to the staff and students for the manner in which they adapted to the huge challenges of changing the way they worked and learned. We were getting ready to open up, which was the intention in September, and I wanted to make sure we had a president during that very difficult and challenging period.

The then-president said he wanted to be paid for a year through his legal advisers. Bizarrely, his contract had no notice period. I took legal advice. The current Minister, Deputy Harris, in a similar situation when the director general of the HSE was resigning, said in the Dáil on 17 May 2018 that payment in lieu of notice is normal. The Department was involved in a Supreme Court case way back in 1940, the Murphy case, and there is also Independent Newspapers and the Carey case in August 2003. There is significant case law that suggests people are entitled to a payment in lieu of notice.

I obviously did not want to pay a year. As we wanted to minimise that, negotiations took place between our external lawyers for the university and the former president's lawyers. As part of that, and on advice, legal fees were paid, which were €25,000 plus VAT. All of that was approved by the governing authority, although not the amount of the legal fees because we were not quite certain of it at that point. The governing authority approved the payment. The president got four months in lieu of notice and two months' holidays. He worked remotely until the end of August. I wanted to be in a situation where we could appoint an interim president and have a competition for it, rather than anoint somebody. That was obviously going to take some time over the summer. They are circumstances in which that was-----