The Irish Federation of University Teachers has revealed that certain senior staff at University College Dublin are earning over €400,000 a year.
IFUT's General Secretary Mike Jennings said he was astonished at the pay packages, which the union uncovered through repeated Freedom of Information requests over a period of 18 months.
He cited the example of UCD's Vice President for Research, who has a basic salary of €230,000 - almost double the salary of a university professor.
In addition, the Vice President for Research is receiving a pension contribution of 40% of salary, an annual bonus of up to 30% and €15,000 for expenses.
The total package comes to €406,000.
Nine other senior staff are also on pay packages that exceed standard guidelines. The combined basic cost of the 10 staff amounts to €2.4m.
Mike Jennings described the salaries as exorbitant and shocking - particularly at a time when frontline academic staff had been given no pay increase at all in the benchmarking process, and UCD has a deficit.
He claimed that linking bonuses to 'quantitative performance targets', which might include bringing in additional research funding, could put more pressure on academics to pursue research projects on the basis of whether they would attract higher private funds.
Defending the salaries, a spokesperson for UCD said the university was in full compliance with Higher Education Authority guidelines for the recruitment of strategic staff, where higher salaries might be required to attract the right people.
He categorically rejected IFUT's claims that under this system rich business people would gain more control over the universities.
He said virtually all research funding is awarded via state or EU agencies on the basis of transparent competitive procedures and has little to do with individual business people.
He said there was no question of UCD's policies or activities being driven by anything other than its agreed public mission statement.
