Trinity’s Financial Services Division has been named Finance Team of the Year at the Irish Accountancy Awards.
The awards, which took place last night, named Trinity winners of the prestigious award. Previous winners include Nissan Ireland and finance firm Fexco.
The other nominees were CDE Global Finance and Accounts Team, Fexco, MBS Retail and TV3.
The long list of judges included Emer Gilvarry, the Chairperson of law firm Mason, Hayes and Curran; Francis Kehoe, the Deputy Director of Finance for the Irish Defence Forces; and Mary Rose Burke, the CEO of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
Trinity’s finance team is led by Chief Financial Officer Ian Mathews. Mathews, whose primary job is ensuring the financial sustainability of Trinity, which has faced years of deficits, has never been shy of making clear Trinity’s precarious financial position.
In an email statement to The University Times, Mathews said: “It was a privilege to be shortlisted alongside such esteemed organisations, from all sectors and to win surpassed all our expectations.”
“Having experienced huge organisational change over the last 10 years, I am very proud to say that every member of our team has contributed to our transformation into the high performance finance team we are today”, he added.
Speaking to postgraduate students earlier this year, Mathews pinned the blame for College’s financial position on the lack of state funding for higher education and admitted that, faced with underfunding, fee increases for postgraduate students were one of the few options left to Trinity.
Speaking to The University Times last year, Mathews said, at a time of underfunding, “you can contract in that environment and you can batten down the hatches, or you can take more of an aggressive approach in terms of generating revenue streams so you’re not reliant on the exchequer”.
In recent years, Trinity has taken a more proactive approach to generating revenue, commercialising parts of College and focusing on tourism.
At the Education Awards 2018 earlier this month, Trinity’s Public Affairs and Communications division was named Best Marketing/Communications Team.
