The increase in consultancy expenditure arose from the university's ongoing strategic review, according to a UCD spokesperson. "The use of consultancy services increased over this period largely due to the reform programme at the university. During a period of change organisations normally engage consultants to undertake work which is often temporary in nature. These consultants bring skills that are not available within the organisation."

Details of the consultancy spending were released under the Freedom of Information Act. The Comptroller and Auditor General has been asked to review two specific consultancy contracts, one of which was an arrangement with Blueview Ltd, which received 274,582 from UCD in 2005 and 2006. Blueview was contracted by UCD without a public tender process, despite the fact that the amount of money involved was above the 60,000 threshold specified by the Department of Finance as requiring a national tender competition, according to FOI documents.

Blueview was hired to oversee the 2005 transfer of Desmond Fitzgerald from the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) to UCD, where he is now vice president for research. The first document provided by UCD in relation to the recruitment of Blueview is an undated contract written by Aoibheann Gibbons, who is listed as one of the company's directors. Gibbons is now director of research strategy and planning in Fitzgerald's office. She previously worked at RCSI with Fitzgerald before his transfer to UCD.

In explaining why the Blueview contract did not go out to tender, UCD cited public sector regulations for the recruitment of consultants which were drawn up by former Revenue boss Dermot Quigley after the Monica Leech controversy, when Martin Cullen was environment minister. Quigley stipulates that established tendering rules can be set aside only when the factors that give rise to 'urgency' are "serious, unforeseeable. . . and should be very rare", or when it is "demonstrably clear that another service provider could not perform a contract more economically."

In FOI correspondence, UCD said Blueview "provided an individual [Gibbons] with significant expertise and prior knowledge of the multi-million euro activities in which Professor Fitzgerald was engaged and, as such, was in a unique position having the particular expertise necessary to ensure the efficient and most economical implementation of the transition process for his teams, contracts and assets."

UCD was unable to confirm this weekend if Fitzgerald took the decision to invoke the Quigley urgency criteria for the Blueview contract, although he approved a subsequent contract with Blueview.

In a separate case, PriceWaterhouseCoopers was also recruited without a public tender process in 2005 at a cost of 122,245 exclusive of VAT.

In response to an original FOI request for details on consultancy contracts, UCD at first refused to release the names of individual consultancy firms. However, details were provided after an appeal decision by the Information Commissioner. The Academic Staff Association at UCD, which has been monitoring consultancy expenditure at the university, said that "good management practice surely demands transparency in the expenditure of public funds."