The Perl that was in the #!shebang line was a Perl they installed back in around 2004 located in /usr/local/perl5, so not the one that comes with Oracle.

We do have a department directory, which I have what we call 'admin' permissions on, so I can do anything I want in that directory and in that directory alone, hence why I can compile Perl in that directory.

Yes, I know it is a management problem, the company is over 100 years old, new management is only thinking about the front end, and making new and exciting stuff to sell to customers. They don't realize the whole company runs on old stuff that needs replaced too (content gathering, selection, ingestion). Face lifts don't fix the backend.