AUTHORITIES AT University College Dublin have stepped in to provide €225,000 to the students’ union bar committee to pay redundancy money to 13 former workers at the campus bar.
The bar, once the busiest in the State, closed in June with huge debts and amid accusations of mismanagement by the college bar committee. The committee, comprised of student and academic staff representatives, ran the bar as a club and as such was not legally required to file yearly accounts.
The students’ union is understood to have been one of its biggest creditors, having run up a tab over the last few years of €96,000. Rachel Breslin, the new president of the students’ union, said yesterday a union tab had not been run up in the past year. “Certainly at some stage in the past there has been a tab, but I am not aware of one this year,” she said.
Staff at the bar, most of who had been working there for more than 10 years, were made redundant in June. Following arbitration at the Labour Relations Commission, between the workers’ union Mandate and a HR consultant brought in by the bar committee to liaise with the workers, an agreement was reached on August 13th to pay statutory redundancy, plus two weeks’ pay per year of service.
However, up to yesterday afternoon, this had not been paid and Mandate served notice that a picket would be put on the college on Monday morning. The union had the support of the other main union at the college, Siptu.
But yesterday evening college authorities intervened and undertook to provide €225,000 to the bar committee to make the redundancy payments.
Joe Donnelly, Mandate organiser, said if the first tranche of payments was not in the accounts by Monday morning, a picket would be placed on the college.
Separately, the other bar on campus, the Forum, is also closed. It shut for refurbishment and the builder involved in the project went into liquidation. It remains unclear whether it will reopen.
