Minister 'desperately angry' at €7m Arts Council waste

Vivienne Clarke

Minister for Arts and Culture Patrick O’Donovan has said that his priority in his new portfolio is “to examine externally the culture of governance, oversight, adherence to the public spending code and schedule adherence of not just this project, but of other projects that have been commenced and carried out by the council.

“It's the second big issue that our department has faced, the other being RTÉ, and it is a cause of huge annoyance and anger within government and certainly from my perspective as well.

"There’s young artists and artists all across the country, community groups and people who would look at almost €7 million and say with the small monies that are being allocated to them, that this is something that they probably could have done with.”

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Mr O’Donovan said that when he was “settling in” to his department and having met with officials, he became aware of the issue with the 2023 set of accounts, of which he made his government colleagues aware because there was an obligation on each Minister to lay the accounts before the Oireachtas.

He was obliged to make his colleagues aware of the problem where nearly €7 million was spent with no ICT project.

Mr O’Donovan said that the Comptroller and Auditor General had identified that the cause of impairment was in excess of €5.5 million.

"In other words, the monies that are likely to be lost. I'm not certain as to whether or not the other monies that have been spent will be of any benefit or any use to the Arts Council going forward. That's a matter to be determined.”

The Minister explained that the project was “drawn to shuddering end" in July last year, and the secretary general at that stage initiated an internal review, which Mr O’Donovan had published.

He had to be satisfied that there were no other issues, especially given the considerable budget of the Arts Council - €140 million.

“So, the first thing I am going to do is set terms of reference. I will go back to the Cabinet and seek approval from the Cabinet to initiate the investigation. And I hope to have those terms of reference concluded within the next fortnight or 10 days.”

Mr O’Donovan said he was anxious to carry out the investigation as quickly as possible because “there is a systems failure here that is quite extraordinary really in terms of adherence to public spending codes, to governance, to procurement, to oversight, to schedule adherence to project management, none of which would have been reported to the secretary general in the department. And it also wouldn't have been reported as a result to colleagues in government.”

Mr O’Donovan said he was “desperately angry” when he became aware of the issue two weeks ago when he took up office.

“This is a huge amount of public monies that has been wasted that cannot be recovered and will not be able to be used for any process other than waste.”