PALMER. the law school's request of the government was without a ceiling

GOVERNMENT owes the Norman Manley Law School, Mona, $73 million, but it is paying down the debt and has promised to complete payments by the end of March.

The debt, Carol Palmer, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice, told the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Tuesday, stood at $126 million in the financial year 2003/2004.

".We got to the point of identifying the value of the debt in 2003/2004, entered into four-way discussions - Ministry of Finance and Planning, Ministry of Justice, the university and the law school - to agree on the debt. The Ministry of Finance then proposed a payment plan to clear the debt and that's the plan we are working with," Palmer told Tuesday's meeting of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee.

She said the ministry was sticking to the plan, but in its first year it did not get the funds to do it and that was why the debt was still so high.

"At the same time we have instituted a cap on the funds made available for current year's expenses for the law school, because up until we got into this arrangement, the law school's request of the government was without a ceiling, meaning that regardless of the ceiling that the Ministry of Finance gave us, on what was available, the law school would submit its budget without any reference to that figure.
And so, we were getting into a spiralling debt, running out of control," added Palmer.

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