More than 20 employees of University of Galway have signed up to repayment plans after their salaries were inflated by thousands of euro by mistake.

The university has declined to say how much of the money that was overpaid to staff in error is still outstanding.

According to its own financial statements, the university identified 25 incidences of salary overpayments during the financial year to the end of September 2024.

By the end of the calendar year — as of December 31, 2024 — some €202,000 in overpaid salaries remained outstanding.

This had reduced to €132,000 by March 2025.

A note on the matter in the university’s own financial reports stated it “has taken action to address a shortcoming in training and internal controls”.

A spokesperson for the university this week declined to divulge how much the initial overpayments amounted to, or what was the up-to-date figure on how much in overpaid salaries had been repaid.

The university also declined to say whether fresh incidents of salary overpayments had been identified in the past year.

In response to queries from the Galway City Tribune, a spokesperson for University of Galway said:

“A structured repayment plan is in place to recover salary overpayments related to more than 20 employees. These are being progressed as per agreements.”

Previous financial reports by the university found that it overpaid one of its employees by more than €100,000 in 2019 and 2021.

The Comptroller and Auditor General at the time said the university had taken steps to “avoid re-occurrence of this”.

The issue of salary overpayments hit the headlines in recent times after it emerged some 34 Government Ministers received overpayments due to miscalculations on their pension entitlements by the National Shared Services Office.

The issue arose after ministers sacrificed salary increases, and confusion ensued about whether pension deductions should have been made from their gross salary or the net salary that they gave up.