The news of 632 job cuts at the University of Dundee sent shockwaves through the city.
Tuesday’s devastating development came five months after The Courier revealed the institution was in crisis and facing inevitable cutbacks.
Interim principal Shane O’Neill, who replaced Iain Gillespie last year after the full scale of the university’s financial challenges emerged, has faced questions over his role in the chaos.
Our political editor Alasdair Clark spoke to him just hours after the job losses emerged.
This is the interview in full.
Q: We spoke a couple of months ago and I asked if you were here for the long run. Today wasn’t easy. Is that commitment still there?
A: “It is. You’re right. today wasn’t easy, but I think we’ve been working towards a plan, which I think we’ve been clear with people from the offset it was going to be a difficult plan to come through because the scale of the challenge was quite substantial.
“We are continuing to work on some further details that will be required to just reshape and reorganise and resize the university. But yeah, you’re right. It was a very difficult day.”
Q: You’ve set out some of the issues that you’ve identified and the errors. You were the deputy principal when some of these errors were made. Have you considered that and whether that affects your position now?
A: “I have considered it and I’m very clear that I’ve been asked to lead this university, and I think I do feel I’m the right person to lead the university at the moment.
“I’ve been working really hard to make sure that we do have an effective leadership team that are working well with our colleagues on court, with external stakeholders who we need to work with.
“And I’ve been working very hard to ensure that we have those relationships.
“Being the deputy and a member the executive I’ve been open about the fact that the executive was not operating with the quality of information that it should have had in terms of making timely and sensible decisions about dealing with the challenges it faced.
“Further details of all of those kind of issues will be explored fully in the external investigation that I’ve asked for, and we’re working with SFC to finalise the terms of reference and identify a suitable independent agency that will deliver that investigation.
“So I’m very confident that I in my role, I carried out my last as deputy, to the best of my ability.
“I don’t believe there was anything that I was doing that was contributing significantly to these challenges, because, as I said, as a member the executive, we didn’t have the quality of information that we that we should have had.”
Q: Who is to blame, who is at fault for that?
A: “I think it’s probably for that external investigation to really detail who precisely didn’t do or did do what they shouldn’t or should have done at the right time.
“It’s probably not the appropriate thing for me to come out and say what my views are. I certainly learned a lot of things that I know should have happened, but I think it’s for that external, independent investigator to kind of come to more definitive conclusions about that.”
Q: And what does accountability look like?
A: “There have been significant changes in terms of the personnel who are sitting around the executive table. You could say that is in part accountability.
“There’s been a change, obviously, in the court leadership as well. So I do think that accountability has been taken.
“But I’m trying to demonstrate that by the way in which we’re going about this work. So we’re really trying to be open and honest. There’s nothing to hide. Colleagues can make up their own mind about whether that’s effective leadership.”
Q: Are you clear that without these job cuts, the future of the university would be unsustainable?
A: “Yes: At the presentation today I did set out for our colleagues that we’ve been basically living with three possible scenarios over the last few months.
“What I call scenario A is the is the path we’re on where we need to find a way to resize, reshape the university, restructure it, so that we can become sustainable for the future.
“Scenario B would be to break the institution up or to merge it. It wouldn’t be recognisable at all. We’re trying to avoid that but it is a reality that if we don’t succeed in delivering a full recovery, we could be facing that kind of scenario.
“Scenario C is the least palatable of all for the city, and for everyone who wants anything good for this university, which is that we just cease to exist.
“They are not hypothetical examples. These are possible ways in which the outcome could go and we’re determined to make scenario A work.”
Q: You’ve set out some changes to the structure of the university, the reduction in schools to three faculties. What will those three focusses be?
A: “The proposal is we will have a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, which will bring together the creative arts with business, social sciences and humanities.
“We will have a Faculty of Science, Engineering and Allied Health, which will bring those schools together, including dentistry and health sciences, and a Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences.”
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