University of Limerick assured Higher Education head that €8m site purchase was 'a good deal'
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The head of the oversight body for third-level institutions has said it was assured by the University of Limerick that an €8m purchase of a disused shopping centre in the city “was a good deal”.
Dr Alan Wall, chief executive of the Higher Education Authority, said he was “not happy” about recent revelations concerning that transaction and he is “anxious to talk to UL about what we now know”.
Dr Wall told the Public Accounts Committee he had no inkling there were governance issues at UL until a series of recent media reports, and that when the university had been asked whether or not its governance was in order, “it said that it was”.
“We do not provide oversight of land purchases,” he said.
“There have been dozens of them in recent years and we’ve seen none of them.”
It emerged in recent weeks that the Dunnes Stores site in Limerick city centre, which UL acquired in 2019 for €8m with the aim of building a city campus, had been valued at just €3m two years before, and that no independent valuation was performed on the site prior to that purchase.
Dr Wall said the HEA would be meeting UL next Monday to discuss the transaction, and this is likely to be the “first of many” such interactions.
“We have very limited powers,” but “if there’s something we haven’t picked up” he would be anxious to follow up on same.
“Not having picked something up is pretty tame stuff,” observed Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.
“This is not something you have taken up wrong, we know these things, why can’t you agree that this is less than credible?” she asked.
“We are all concerned about what we can rely on in terms of some of this and that’s what we want to talk to UL about what may or may not have happened,” Dr Wall replied.
He was petitioned by committee chair Brian Stanley to ask UL at the forthcoming meeting about a suggestion the university’s board had been given a same-day ultimatum at a meeting in 2019 to discuss the separate opera site in the city – originally the university’s preferred site for the new campus – as to whether or not it would sanction the Dunnes Stores deal.
Mr Stanley said he had been reliably informed said ultimatum had been delivered.
“There are a range of issues we will be putting to them,” Dr Wall said.
Asked by Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster whether or not the HEA had been “played for fools” by the university, Dr Wall said he “didn’t know” if that was the case, but he has “a question over the annual governance statement they gave us”.
He said it would be an “unfair characterisation” to suggest the HEA was in “no hurry” to investigate the matter.
“In relation to 2019, we had a governance statement indicating that €8m had been spent and saying there are no governance issues, and in subsequent meetings we asked questions and again heard that there were no issues,” he said.
“We didn’t know about it, and now we do and we’re going to take steps.
Dr Wall did acknowledge, however, that it is “not unfair” to describe the HEA as being “toothless”.
“You are right about the sector,” he told Ms Murphy. “We need to move towards being less toothless.”
He said he is “expecting” that the new Higher Education Act 2021 will confer such “appropriate regulatory legislative powers” upon the HEA.