After not receiving their usual summer funding after rejecting the proposed funding agreement with the College, Dublin Institute of Technology Students’ Union (DITSU) has received interim funding, but maintains concern over their future funding agreement and how it could affect the “union’s position as a fully independent organisation”.
This interim payment allows the union to pay its staff, something it had claimed it was unable to do after the 2013-2016 funding agreement between the union and the College expired and the union did not receive expected funding in July. The 2016-2019 funding agreement is yet to be introduced as the union rejected the proposal after it was revised in light of concerns over the union’s ability to audit itself.
This revision would see the union subject to internal auditing by DIT, with the results of the audit brought to Governing Body and the College’s Audit Committee for review. The President of DITSU, Boni Odoemene, described this revision to The University Times, as something “we could not accept”.
The topic of the agreement is expected to return at a meeting of the College’s Governing Body, which oversees the management of Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), in September.
While he states that the union is pleased that interim funding has been secured, Odoemene added that they still feel unable to accept these terms in agreeing to a funding model for the next three years.
In an email statement to The University Times, Odoemene asked: “How can DITSU be an unfettered voice for students if the DIT’s Internal Audit Office and its Governing Body are holding us to account rather than us holding them to account? It would not be acceptable in a union-employer-context for this to happen, so why here?”
Since July, a number of meetings between DIT management representatives and the union have taken place in an effort to find agreement acceptable to both sides, and more talks are expected.
Speaking to The University Times, Melda Slattery, DIT’s Head of Public Affairs, stated that the College “also supports the independence of DIT Students’ Union 100 per cent”, adding that the College hopes that the issue would soon be resolved.
Numerous public figures have expressed concern over the perceived harm that the proposed auditing structure would have on the independence of the union. Speaking to The University Times, Senator Gerard Craughwell, who, alongside other senators and TDs, had been vocal in calling for interim funding to be secured for the union, quoted an email sent to him by the President of DIT, Prof Brian Norton, that states audits would be conducted by external auditors and not by the College itself.
Quoting the email, Craughwell said that “the internal audit function of DIT is the administrative conduit through which the audit committee oversees DIT’s finances” and that “the matter of oversight is entirely the responsibility of the Governing Body audit committee, and quite rightly is not a process in which the institute can be involved”.
Odoemene highlighted that the union is currently audited externally and that the union publishes its financial statements: “We have no problem being financially audited. What DIT are proposing are not a financial audit, but an internal audit, of our structure, of our governance – everything we do.”
Craughwell has been one of many public figures who have mirrored such concern over how such a structure could harm the independence of the union.
“For me, to have an internal audit of the students’ union by the governing body, that would be repugnant to their independence”, Craughwell stated. “You simply can’t have internal auditors walking in there and going through every document in the union. You’re then attacking the independence of the union once you do that, as far as I’m concerned.”
He continued: “If the funding agency has the ability to look at the mechanics of the union and how it carries out its operations then the union becomes neutered, because they’re constantly looking over their shoulders as to what the internal auditors will say. You’re taking away the power of the executive of the union, so I would have serious concerns there.”
Annie Hoey, President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), also stated to The University Times that USI are “deeply concerned” over the proposal, adding: “It’s a point of principle that they are to be kept separate and not to fall in under an internal auditing mechanism.”
