UCD academic on 'secret' package worth e406,000
Saturday April 05 2008
Ten senior staff at UCD are earning €2.4m a year between them, with one academic pulling in a massive salary package worth €400,000 -- €90,000 more than the next Taoiseach Brian Cowen will be paid.
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, were disclosed by a union on the day UCD President Dr Hugh Brady pleaded for more funding for universities.
The details, released by the Federation of University Teachers, led to to an angry reaction from the union, which said they were "massively inflated pay packages".
"We had to make repeated appeals under that Act before the university finally revealed the salaries in question. Now we know what it is they were trying to hide" said IFUT general secretary Mike Jennings."
"UCD's Vice President for Research Prof Desmond Fitzgerald has a pay package worth in excess of €400,000 per year.
"He has a basic salary which is almost double the salary of the University Professor and over four times the starting salary for a college lecturer.
Package
"In addition to his basic salary of €230,000, UCD pays a bonus of 30pc and an enormous pension contribution of 40pc. When all of these elements are combined along with €15,000 for expenses, the total package is worth €406,000" claimed Mr Jennings.
UCD sources acknowledged that the pension arrangements for Prof Fitzgerald seemed generous but pointed out that post was for a 10- year period during which it was necessary to contribute 40pc of gross basic salary into a defined contribution scheme.
The university also stressed that the packages were within the norms set down by Higher Education Authority which allows higher than usual salaries for people with skills that were not ordinarily available.
It is known that the reported salaries have caused some annoyance on campus among not just senior academics but also senior administrators, as four of the high earners are on the administrative side.
Said Mr Jennings "at a time when UCD has a crippling deficit and when frontline academic staff have been offered a zero increase by the Benchmarking Body, these revelations are truly shocking" .
"How can anyone expect underpaid and under-resourced academic staff to keep giving unpaid productivity when they see these inflated salaries being paid secretly to a chosen few?"
"Already several academics have contacted IFUT angrily demanding 'why should we work so hard for so little reward when clearly pay restraint is only for the little people?' "
He added that there was one very disturbing aspect to these secretly negotiated salaries. "UCD pays the VP for Research a bonus of up to 30pc for "quantitative performance targets." In other words, the more money he brings in on externally funded research projects, the higher his bonus will be.
Pressure
"This will inevitably mean more and more pressure on academics to pursue research projects, not on the basis of their intrinsic value, but on the basis of whether they will attract higher private funds. This explains why rich business men have more and more control over our nation's third-level system."
Yesterday both UCD President Dr Hugh Brady and former EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland spoke on RTE's 'Morning Ireland' about the need to invest heavily in university education if the Irish economy is to remain competitive.
- John Walshe Education Editor
