The Arts Council wrote to officials almost 60 times about a botched €6.75 million IT project without the issue being escalated to a senior level within the Department of Culture, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
The Oireachtas arts and media committee was hearing from Arts Council leadership and senior officials in the department on Wednesday.
Maureen Kennelly, the director of the council who has announced she is leaving the organisation, said she found her dealings with the department over providing staffing resources for the project “very disappointing and frustrating”.
She told committee chair, Labour TD Alan Kelly, that she felt let down by the experience.
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Arts Council wrote to officials almost 60 times over botched IT project without issue being escalated
She said the principal officer she dealt with in the department at the time was “encouraging and reassuring” when the council updated her about the “twists and turns” in the saga, which lasted several years and culminated in the abandonment of the project.
However, Ms Kennelly said she had “no idea” the issue wasn’t being escalated and it came as a great surprise to her when she found this out.
Following Ms Kennelly’s contribution, the department’s secretary general Feargal Ó Coigligh appeared to dispute the number of contacts made with the department, only for Ms Kennelly to reassert that it was “just short of 60”.
Mr Ó Coigligh said it was a failure on behalf of the department that the matter wasn’t escalated.
“We were probably being over-supportive rather than challenging,” he told the committee.
Mr Kelly later told the secretary general that the failure to escalate the issue suggested the department was “totally and utterly dysfunctional”.
Mr Ó Coigligh said he did not agree with this.
The committee was also told the department has instructed the council to stop spending money on legal cases it has taken seeking to recoup some of the lost investment.
The body has initiated legal proceedings against two of the 21 contractors involved in the project, Codec and Expleo, and is in pre-action engagement with another two.
The committee was told €60,000 has been spent on these actions so far.
However, Mr Ó Coigligh said the department had instructed the council that there should be no further expenditure on the legal cases until a recently-commenced engagement with the Attorney General’s office on the matter had concluded.
The committee heard that the instruction was given after an appearance at the Public Accounts Committee at the end of last month where the spending was discussed.
Mr Ó Coigligh was repeatedly asked by Fine Gael Senator Garret Ahearn whether the department was supportive of the cases being taken and if any officials had raised concerns about the potential costs of the legal cases.
“What we have said is that the Arts Council should not incur any further costs on legal action” pending the view of the Attorney General, he said.
Later, Ms Kennelly said the council had been “very much” encouraged by senior officials to try to recover money spent on the project.
Sinn Féin TD for Louth Joanna Byrne said Ms Kennelly had been “thrown under the bus” when she was not offered a new term as Arts Council director.
Mr Kelly said she had been offered up as a “sacrificial lamb” in the wake of the controversy over the IT project, adding that he felt a “great degree of concern about what has transpired here”.
She told the committee that she was disappointed not to be given a second five-year term and would have liked to have stayed on.
Asked if she felt Minister for Culture Patrick O’Donovan had confidence in her, she said her employer was the Arts Council board and she felt she had its confidence and that of her colleagues.
Arts Council chair Maura McGrath confirmed that the board had recommended a new five-year term for Ms Kennelly.
The council had sought a second term for Ms Kennelly and when that wasn’t forthcoming, they asked for the decision to be deferred until a review into the spending controversy was complete.
However, the committee was told that, ultimately, Mr O’Donovan offered a nine-month extension which was “heavily conditioned” in that it would only be in place until a replacement was found.
“I felt it was unacceptable,” Ms Kennelly said.
