The innappropriate spending by senior academics at NUI Galway’s Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI ) was exposed this week with revelations that more than €108,000 was spent on hiring private jets and €154,000 was used to send up to 50 staff to conferences at a luxury resort in Crete.
According to reports the frivolous spending sanctioned by the former directors of DERI took place between 2003 and 2006. It was revealed that €1.3 million was spent on foreign travel by the institute in just three years and that there were clashes over some of the spending prior to the departure of two of DERI’s directors, Professor Dieter Fensel and Professor Christoph Bussler.
NUI Galway has confirmed that DERI was established following the funding of €12 million under the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI ) CSET Initiative in 2003. An internal audit by NUI Galway and an external audit by SFI into DERI’s spending was conducted and found that certain levels of travel expenditure were deemed “inappropriate”.
SFI accountants found that a total of €185,000 had been spent inappropriately and the university was forced to repay €170,000 for flights and conference trips.
Professor Fensel and Professor Bussler, both German nationals, were appointed to lead DERI in 2003. Professor Fensel was recruited as scientic director, on a part-time professorship, while still maintaining a position at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Professor Bussler was appointed executive director.
Soon after his appointment Professor Fensel complained that the travel between Innsbruck and Galway, which involved four commercial flights, was cumbersome. A Freedom of Information request showed that he hired 10 charter flights to take himself and a group of researchers from Innsbruck to Galway during his time with DERI, at a cost of €108,000.
A statement received on Tuesday from NUI Galway said: “From 2004, the university recognised that the behaviour and leadership of DERI, specifically in relation to the level of travel expenditure, was inappropriate and intervened to impose more effective management controls. Subsequently there has been a restructuring of the directorship of the institute and the introduction of new management and tighter controls on spending”.
“Given the valid concerns expressed by SFI in relation to the level of expenditure on certain travel at DERI, NUI Galway entered a consultation process with SFI, and agreed to refund the cost of inappropriate travel expenditure from non-exchequer income. A subsequent SFI audit of DERI in June 2007, covering the period to the end of November 2006, did not find any issues related to travel expenditure, and acknowleddged that stricter controls were now in place.”
The university went on to state that DERI, the world’s largest research institute for semantic web research, was reviewed in 2008 by SFI and received a renewal in funding of €19 million for a further five years. The statement explains that DERI has leveraged €55 million in competitive research income, with almost 30 per cent of that won as international funding.
