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Chair of institute has plagiarism ruling overturned

   Saturday, May 04, 2013
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   An external investigation has found that Institute of Technology Tralee
   (ITT) chairman Flan Garvey committed unintentional plagiarism in a 2008
   master’s thesis but this has been overturned on a technical appeal.

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   The three academics appointed in December to probe a complaint by 26
   ITT academics found plagiarism in two chapters of the thesis about his
   Co Clare parish.

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   It has upheld the appeal on grounds relating to the understanding of
   the nature of plagiarism, in a report finalised this week and also seen
   by the Irish Examiner.

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   by the Irish Examiner.

   It found that college rules around plagiarism were not clearly
   formulated or clearly communicated to postgraduate students. On that
   basis, it said, a finding of an award being unjustified would be unfair
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   However, a source told the Irish Examiner that staff are baffled at the
   outcome and many believe it places a question mark over any previous
   cases of students sanctioned for plagiarism.

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   Plagiarism finding

   After word-for-word comparisons with texts cited by the complainants,
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   interspersed with occasional references to another.

   One section complained of in chapter 4 was found not to be plagiarism
   after the investigators were made aware of Mr Garvey’s contribution to
   the authorship of a local history pamphlet.