FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL Officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan has been awarded an Adjunct Professorship in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Medicine.
He shared the news on LinkedIn, where he said he was looking forward to working with his new colleagues.
The move was approved by TCD’s Senior Academic Promotions Committee in February and ratified by the University Council in March.
According to the university’s website, Adjunct academic staff are not appointed on the basis of a competition and TCD is not their primary employer.
“If they are paid it is for a specific purpose in teaching and/or research and on a fee-per-item basis, which may be annualised to a fixed annual salary.”
TCD confirmed that Holohan’s role does not include a salary.
The father-of-two became a household name during the pandemic, when he chaired the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).
He was previously embroiled in scandal after he was offered a secondment at TCD.
In 2022, he was to fill the newly-created role of Professor of Public Health Strategy and Leadership.
The position – which included a salary of €187,000 per year – would have been funded by the Department of Health, rather than TCD, which sparked the controversy.
The open-ended nature of the job also garnered criticism.
After questions were raised by politicians and commentators over the secondment, then-Taoiseach Micheál Martin called for the appointment to be paused.
Holohan announced he would not take up the position and then retired as CMO in July 2022, after 14 years in the job, stating that he did not want to see the controversy continue.
A report published in April 2023 found that Holohan should not have been personally involved in aspects of the offer.
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