

Áine Ryan



GALWAY-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) may be forced to stop funding its Castlebar campus, which could precipitate its closure, if the Department of Education fails to step in and provide essential monies, The Mayo News can reveal.

GMIT’s Governing Body has requested a meeting with the Higher Education Authority (HEA) in a bid to resolve ongoing budgetary problems and devise a strategy for developing ‘a financially sustainable funding model’.

An ominous letter to the HEA, seen by The Mayo News and written by GMIT’s Jim Fennell, the Vice President for Finance and Corporate Affairs, confirms that the Castlebar campus ‘is not financially viable’ and, moreover, that ‘it is not financially sustainable for GMIT to continue to support the campus from its own resources’.

Written on November 3, the letter notes that when the Mayo campus was established back in 1994, it was at ‘the behest of the Department of Education and Skills’, which provided ‘ring-fenced funding’ with a ‘commitment’ given that ‘it would not be a financial burden on (the then) RTC Galway’.

Mr Fennell writes: “The past five years have been a challenge for the entire higher education sector, and GMIT has responded to this challenge by financially supporting that campus from its own reserves at a time of significant reductions in State funding for higher education.”

Responding in writing, Dr Deirdre Garvey, Head of the Mayo Campus, noted that the Governing Body’s conclusion of October 13 and its subsequent letter to the HEA would ‘have very serious implications for the current students studying at the Mayo Campus, for the staff at the Mayo Campus and on our many stakeholders in this region’.

She argues that the letter ‘fails to recognise that the Mayo Campus is an integral part of the GMIT’. Dr Garvey notes that the letter refers to the Mayo campus as ‘that Campus’ and how the institute ‘has supported that Campus from its own reserves’. She points to the fact that a recent external financial review highlights the fact that ‘GMIT’s deficits by no means arise simply because of remote campus considerations’.

Quoting the Institutes of Technology Act 2006, which espouses ‘vocational and technical education’ in ‘the region served by the college’, she also refers to the HEA’s 2016 acknowledgement that such education in multiple campuses ‘presents wider socio-economic benefits within rural communities’.

New funding model

MEANWHILE, a source close to GMIT expressed hope yesterday that the difficult funding situation could possibly be resolved if ‘the HEA altered their funding model so that multi-campus entities are better financed’. However, the source said that ‘the scale of the deficit in GMIT generally suggests they may act on this threat in order to save the wider entity’.

Last May, the TUI members of the staff at GMIT threatened to take strike action if Government did not restore its core funding and agree a five-year investment strategy to ensure GMIT is in a position to enhance its regional and rural provision as a multi-campus. An emergency meeting held the previous week called on Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, to immediately restore the €2 million budget cut of 2014-15. This cut added to a 40 percent core funding cut between 2008 and 2014.

Earlier this month, The Irish Times revealed there were ‘major concerns over the future of some ten of the country’s 14 institutes of technology due to financial deficits and dwindling cash reserves’, according to the aforementioned HEA review. Six of these, including GMIT, were found to be ‘vulnerable’ and facing ‘immediate sustainability challenges’. The report found that multiple campuses were associated with high costs and deficits, citing the fact that GMIT’s Castlebar and Letterfrack campuses were in the red to the tune of €2 million and €700,000 respectively.

Campaign

CAMPAIGNER Paddy McGuinness, who led the 18-year drive to open a Castlebar campus, told The Mayo News earlier this year that: “The Castlebar campus [of GMIT] was set up despite the Establishment and they need to acknowledge now that this institution must be properly resourced as it is the seedbed for the regeneration of rural Ireland.”

He continued: “I fear that there is an attitude in some quarters that if they neglect it enough it will be closed. I am personally not convinced of the main Galway campus’s commitment to the Castlebar campus, and believe it is low on the priorities list of GMIT.”

The Mayo News contacted the Taoiseach’s constituency office yesterday (Monday) regarding the issue but did not receive a response. There was no response to written questions from its Castlebar Head of Centre, Dr Garvey, its President, Dr Fergal Barry or the GMIT press office at the time of going to print last night.