Of course, your average Irish university is more than capable of throwing up a scandal or two — one has only to look at the Technical University of Dublin (TUD) in the past 24 hours to gauge that fact.

However, in terms of bad news stories, UL is in a league of its own.

The sort of headlines that UL has been generating for years now are anathema to what a university should be aspiring to.

For its president since 2020, Professor Kerstin Mey, time may now well be up.

Last year, Prof Mey appeared at the Public Accounts Committee ostensibly to argue that UL had turned a corner in terms of governance.

However, it was regarded as an inept performance — during which she was asked a question 23 times as to the media training she had received, before finally providing an answer.

The fallout saw the university’s provost, Shane Kilcommins, briefly vacate his post a week later, only to re-emerge alongside Prof Mey as a “fully united executive committee”, while announcing the creation of a “strategic governance committee” to deal with “outstanding issues” at the institution.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the intervening period since that PAC debacle has seen matters get even worse.

There are two specific issues engulfing the institution: One of them legacy, the other (relatively) new.

The first is the ill-fated purchase by UL of the old Dunnes Stores building in Limerick, in 2019, for €8.3m.

The initial controversy over that acquisition stemmed from the fact no formal valuation was prepared of the site, which — as recently as 2017 — had been estimated to be worth just €3m.

On January 31 of this year, Prof Mey wrote (at considerable length) to all UL staff and admitted that, while the overpayment for the building was not extreme as had previously been suggested, the university had still lost €3m on the transaction.

The second issue, which had been brewing for months at the time Prof Mey sent that email, but which had not yet reached boiling point, concerned the purchase of 20 houses at the Drominbeg housing development at Rhebogue — 2km from UL’s main Castletroy campus — for student accommodation in the summer of 2022.

The university is currently subject to planning enforcement by the local authority over that acquisition, which has been housing students since last October, due to no planning application having been lodged to that effect.

However, it is a second email sent by Prof Mey last Friday concerning Rhebogue that has brought matters to a head.

In it, the president admitted that UL had paid “significantly above market price” for those 20 houses, to the tune of more than €5m — probably closer to €6m when transactional fees and stamp duty are taken into account.

In two emails, sent just 51 days apart, the professor had updated staff of losses to the institution of close to €9m.

For a body dependent on State funds for its existence, the implications are calamitous.

The reason the Rhebogue purchase is so damaging to Prof Mey is that it happened on her watch, in an institution that had already been devastated by allegations of financial impropriety over the previous decade. For right or wrong, the Dunnes purchase predated her time as president.

However, letting history repeat itself should have been unthinkable. While the president has said that “there will be action taken” over the Rhebogue purchase, she may well not get the chance.

It seems the UL staff population has finally run out of patience with her.

Over the past five days, the following has happened: The union representing roughly 50% of UL’s 2,000 employees has expressed no confidence in Prof Mey; 10 of the 13-man executive committee she heads has expressed no confidence in her; 73 of the university’s professors have expressed no confidence in her; and the university’s Kemmy Business School has expressed no confidence in her.

In their letter to university chancellor Brigid Laffan on Monday, expressing a lack of confidence, members of the KBS management group said that “the continued poor leadership decision-making has caused considerable harm to the reputation of the university”, adding that damage “may soon be irreparable” should action not be taken.

Strangely, the rebel executive committee members calling for Prof Mey’s head list Prof Kilcommins among its number. 

The executive is united no more it would seem.

Can Prof Mey survive? The situation continues to evolve at a breakneck pace.

On Tuesday, Ms Laffan unexpectedly announced that she would address the entire university body this afternoon. That meeting will immediately precede another one, that of the university’s governing authority, which will be considering its own review of the Rhebogue transaction.

Amid talk of Government disquiet, the withholding of capital funding cannot be dismissed.

Should that transpire, it will be the third time during Prof Mey’s tenure.

It was then to be off to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on April 11, a hearing which could have proved a tough experience for UL — given the ammunition the PAC members had for questioning — but Prof Mey has informed the Dáil committee that she cannot attend because she is "incapacitated".