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UCD Students’ Union up to €1 million in debt
by Katie Hughes · News Editor
Students’ Union President, Pat de Brún, recently revealed that the SU is up to €1 million in debt. The compiling of accounts, which has been taking place for the past few months, is expected to be completed in the next three weeks. These accounts will include all of the management accounts for the last number of years. According to de Brún, the SU will be applying for external financing from a bank. “We’ve had provisional talks but until we have our full accounts ready we can’t progress with negotiations.” The Union will be seeking to refinance the majority of the sum. Despite promises to do so, a budget was not released at the end of Semester One. De Brún explains that “having spoken to the sabbatical team about it and the Exec, we’d prefer to have a real, one hundred per cent accurate budget and I want to wait until the accounts are available so that everything is one hundred per cent accurate.” The SU is currently in the process of drafting a new constitution, in which they intend to place several measures to ensure financial viability and proper management of accounts. These will include a necessity to have accounts audited every year and “just more robust systems behind [the] management of accounts.” The establishing of UCDSU Ltd is almost complete, “[we’re] finalising who the directors will be and it’s pretty much ready to go. It’s a straightforward enough exercise once that’s done.” De Brún stated that the Union “has been making a huge effort to save money across the board this year, in light of the difficult circumstances.” Cuts have been made across the Union’s activities: “our support staff costs have been cut back massively, saving an estimated €55,000 over the course of the year. On class rep training we saved roughly €5,000. We’ve spent thirty-five per cent less than this time last year on class party drinks tokens. We also saved €4,000 on the Freshers’ Guide. Our transport and exam costs
by Katie Hughes · News Editor
are down by around €11,000. We spent €5,000 on the national campaign this year in comparison with €20,000 last year. Officers have had a reduction in budgets of around forty per cent on average so far. “These are just a few examples that spring to mind and the total figure is much more. Despite the large savings, I believe that most of the money saved has been through efficiencies, with as little impact as possible on students. “Essentially, we have been trying to save money in everything we do. All spending is only approved if necessary and costs such as printing are also way down. This is an extremely testing time for the Union and we are coping as best we can with the reduced resources at our disposal.”
By the end of 2012, almost two hundred PhD students participating in the UCDTCD Innovation Academy will benefit from funding. Bursary applications are accepted in any medium. Pictured is President Hugh Brady with John Hegarty cutting an application in the form of a cake. For full story see Page 2. Photograph courtesy of the Innovation Academy
Medical Director of Health Centre fears privatisation by Katie Hughes · News Editor
UCD’s Health Centre, located in the Student Centre, is currently up for tender. Current Medical Director of the Student Health Centre, Dr Sandra Tighe, was first made aware of the Health Centre being put out for tender in September 2010, “with what I was informed was a view to augmenting the Student Health Service as opposed to replacing the Health Service so I don’t know really, what’s happening in relation to it or how it might impact on my service or my role.” Dr Tighe was assured that jobs would not be affected, however she admits that “we are concerned for both our own future, the integrity of the service and the quality of care that may be there in the future for students.” Dr Tighe explains that a service
SIPTU angered by staff survey
that is part funded by the University is most beneficial to students: “If you’re expecting students to pay out of pocket the full commercial cost for a GP visit, plus enough to generate a profit it would be very difficult to deliver high quality care to students at a reasonable cost and generate a profit. “There’s a perception that private is more efficient than public but I don’t think that there’s any evidence to support that. I think that people need to look at what the evidence is for the outcomes in profit-driven health services, for example what is the evidence of quality of care in say, [the] state system, where it is a profit system, whereas the system we have here is that most practices are a small business; they need to generate a small profit but there isn’t a third party involved that they’re looking to generate money for.”
UCD Students’ Union President Pat de Brún also expressed uncertainty as to whether privatisation would be the most effective option for the Health Centre. “The idea of complete commercialisation of the Student Health Service would concern me so I am trying to find out more information at the moment and trying to work with the Health Centre and the University to find out what the aim of this is and if it would be beneficial or not.” Dr Tighe noted that there are various locations around UCD that provide similar services to the Health Centre, and as such, are its direct competition. These include the Beacon, Blackrock Clinic and Vincent’s Private Hospital. “There’s a lot of people competing for quite a limited private market, so I fully empathise with the college’s position. We’ve co-operated in every way with
the charging, with cost-efficiencies and the rest of it.” “I feel very proud of what we’ve managed to develop since I started nearly fifteen years ago now – we’ve developed the service significantly for students, we provide longer opening hours than any other health service in the country, we have the equivalent of a greater range of services than any other health service in the country and we operate with resources that are equivalently less, due to the budgetary situation.” In August 2011, Dr Tighe put forward a proposal entitled ‘Implement a New Vision of Student Health’, which illustrated an operational plan for the future of the Health Centre. Centric is the only company to have placed a tender for the Health Centre thus far.
SIPTU UCD have recently expressed their dissatisfaction regarding an e-mail being sent out to over one hundred UCD staff members on December 16th asking them to review the performance of a number of named staff in Registry via an online survey. A UCD spokesperson stated that the survey was not part of a performance management exercise, but a “routine customer survey supporting the ongoing development of the services provided by the Programme and School Liaison Team.” SIPTU Representative for Registry, Simon Williams, did not agree with this statement, believing the survey was “essentially a review of staff performance.” The agreed procedure for reviews of staff performance is through the Performance Management Development System (PMDS). Williams stated, “this survey was outside of that system … that’s our view of it.” SIPTU had previously agreed the PMDS system of staff review with University Management. As it is the only agreed system of staff review, Williams explained that “[SIPTU] found this unacceptable, that essentially an arbitrary decision was made by management to review staff performance in ways they decided as appropriate and this was outside the agreement that was in place with the University and SIPTU.” According to an e-mail sent out by the UCD SIPTU Section Committee to UCD members of the union, UCD HR is currently attempting to implement a plan that would link future increments to the outcome of performance reviews. SIPTU maintain “this kind of survey could set a dangerous precedent for future, arbitrary, management decisions, regarding reviews of staff performance.” In relation to this plan, Williams stated that “[SIPTU] would be particularly concerned about this instance because if management in the University decided that they can review staff performance in any way they want … that could be very worrying because staff performance could be linked to increments in the future.” Williams further went on to say that “if the University wants to encourage productivity among staff, the way to do that is to give staff confidence that management respect agreements between SIPTU and the University … This type of thing could potentially undermine that.” SIPTU urged those who received the e-mail not to complete the survey.