THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS committee has heard that some staff at Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) are earning salaries of up to €72,000, but they have no work to do.
The news emerged while PAC was discussing the financial accounts of a number of third-level institutions.
The Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy told committee members staff who earn a combined total of €216,000 a year technically have nothing to do. The employees were transferred to LIT after it merged with a rural business college in Co Tipperary in 2011.
McCarthy said these people are above “an approved level of staffing”, adding: “In this case, they actually have no work.”
To which independent TD Shane Ross asked: “They’re doing nothing?”
McCarthy then said:
Well they’re obviously doing something but they have have no formal assignment in the institute.
Fine Gael TD Patrick O’Donovan probed further, asking: “So people have had no jobs since 2011 at 72,000 a year and no one has done anything about it?”
Before Ross added: “That’s absolutely crackers isn’t it? I mean it’s just bananas.”
“It does happen where organisations are amalgamated that people become surplus to requirements,” McCarthy stated.
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