When you take on a job as a university head, you have an anticipation that there will be a certain salary going with it. You will have bought the house, you will have got the mortgage, which will be bigger than the one from, you know (before). So I can tell you that university heads are as challenged about paying their bills today arising from cutbacks as anybody else.Most of the people who are working as heads of Irish universities could be doing the same thing in universities anywhere around the globe at twice the pay.
Contrary to popular opinion, I do not have a house or a car provided by the university. But I do know that a university in Britain last year advertised the post of vice-chancellor (for a university) the same size as UCC, (which is) behind us in rankings, and if I had applied for it I would have doubled my salary, got a house and the use of a Jaguar.
President of UCC Dr Michael Murphy.
Dr Murphy also questioned how great a salary cut he should accept to satisfy public discord about the matter.
“People who have stayed here have absorbed substantial cuts and have individually made major sacrifices on a voluntary basis already.
“I took a pay cut of 15pc by becoming the university president. On top of that then came the public sector pay cuts and levies.
“So when I say I’m down 40pc in my cash flow, how far do you want people to go? I think everybody in the country has been making enormous sacrifices.
“There is an old saying: ‘pay peanuts, get monkeys’. And I would be seriously concerned that this continuing campaign to force further and further reductions in the quality of life of people who are working 60- and 70-hour weeks will drive people out of the country. It is already happening.”
Triple Distilled Communications 
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