Arts Council has spent €60,000 on legal action over failed grants system

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

The Arts Council has spent €60,000 to date on legal action against contractors over a failed IT grants system, which cost more than €6 million.

The State’s arts body is pursuing legal action against four “key” contractors, where it is hoping to “recoup” some of those costs on behalf of the taxpayer.

It has spent €60,000 on legal proceedings against two contractors to date, which were initiated in late 2022, and began pre-legal actions against two other contractors in recent months, Arts Council director Maureen Kennelly said.

But the Department of Culture said it had told the Arts Council to pause all spending on the system until an independent review is completed in the autumn.

In February, it emerged that the Arts Council spent €6.67 million on a failed IT project that had been in development since 2019.

The upgrade was to replace a “clunky” system for grant applications given to hundreds of organisations and thousands of artists in Ireland.

The system was originally meant to take two and a half years and cost €3 million.

The Arts Council is currently using the old system as the department has paused all approval pending the findings of the independent review.

It said an “off the shelf” system it has opted for instead will cost an additional €1.5 million, pending approval from the department, which has an annual subscription of €241,000.

The original system would have cost €560,000 per annum to ister, the committee heard.

Arts Council representatives, who appeared before the Oireachtas Culture Committee on Wednesday, would not comment on how much legal action against contractors was expected to cost nor how long it would take.

The committee was told €60,000 has been spent so far on legal proceedings against two organisations and pre-legal action against two other firms.

The secretary general of the Department of Culture told the committee that they are of the view that no further funds should be spent on the IT system until a review is completed.

“We would be ive of a response where there was likely to be a good outcome for the taxpayer and we’re engaging with the attorney general,” Feargal Ó Coigligh told the committee.

“I think what we have said is that the Arts Council should not incur any further costs on legal action at this point until review.

“The department has said to the Arts Council that no further expenditure should be incurred … This after the 60,000.”

Mr Ó Coigligh said “project creep” was part of what led to the failures in creating the IT system and said he took responsibility for the Department’s role in it.

“If you look at the history of the project, there was a lot of project creep, the functions, the scope of the project expanded, complexity expanded.

“There’s the whole issue around not just delivering a complex ICT project, but making it more and more complex as it went ahead.

“And I think that’s a fundamental issue as well. So there’s the issue of the expertise and the issue of the project scope.”

Ms Kennelly, who is due to finish in the role in June, said she was disappointed in the arts minister’s position in relation to her contract which she said was a “heavily conditioned up-to-nine months term”.

She said she “felt it was unacceptable” and said she “would have liked to stay on”.

“I’m disappointed about the outcome, certainly, but I know that the board has confidence in me, and I know that my colleagues have confidence in me.”

Arts Council staff grew from 58 in late 2019 to 122, she told the committee, which included staff “in the Irish language” and staff helping artists with disabilities to make applications.

She said the Arts Council asked the Department for an additional ICT person in house, and since then, in April and May 2024, two ICT staff have been hired.

She said of the 2,000 artists they fund, around a dozen are comedians, which Senator Evanne Ni Chuilinn said seemed “a bit low”.

The chairman of the Culture, Communications and Sport committee, Alan Kelly, said it was an “extraordinary” committee hearing and that some issues raised were “alarming”, mentioning in particular the “concerning ethos in how the department handled the issue.