Senior officials from DIT and other third-level colleges will appear before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today to face allegations that they misled TDs over the way they run their financial affairs.
The president of DIT, Prof Brian Norton, has been accused by TDs of withholding a sensitive report commissioned by DIT’s governing body into the loss of more than €700,000 in up-front payments to an academic journal provider that went bankrupt.
The report - completed by consultants Ernst & Young (EY) in 2015 at a cost of almost €27,000 - was not provided to the PAC when DIT first faced questions on these issues in 2016 and again last April.
Instead, Prof Norton provided a “management review” report to the committee which omitted strong criticism of senior managers but included general findings and recommendations.
Prof Norton was later directed by DIT’s governing body to provide the report to the committee.
It instructed the president to note the governing body’s “regret and concern” that this had not been done, and to apologise for the delay. It also directed that extracts from minutes of governing body meetings be sent to the committee which were highly critical of senior managers.
One of these meetings, held in June 2015, noted the governing body’s “grave concern and dismay” at the “failures of governance, the errors made, the lack of transparency in accountability” highlighted in the EY report.
The EY report found that the lapses in governance surrounding the loss of more than €718,000 were not isolated incidents.
In fact, it found that some €29.5 million over a three-year period was not subject to proper checks and balances.
