The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, is to provide €2 million to the Abbey Theatre to help it deal with its financial crisis.
The funding was sought by the Arts Council following an independent review carried out on its behalf by an arts consultant, Ms Anne Bonnar.
It is believed the council met a week ago to discuss the outcome and recommendations of the Bonnar review and subsequently made a case to the Minister for the funding. He agreed to provide the money as a supplementary estimate, which means it will come out of savings within his Department for the current year. He is due to bring the supplementary estimate before a meeting of the Dáil Committee on Arts, Sport and Tourism next week.
The financial boost for the National Theatre will go some way to clearing a deficit which will be around €2.5 million by the end of this year. However, it is understood that a number of key conditions will be attached to the provision of the money: that, as well as deficit-clearing, it must be used to bring in fresh expertise, deal with staffing issues and facilitate restructuring and management change within the organisation.
The Arts Council's independent review, which has not yet been seen by the Abbey, followed the National Theatre's own internal working party review of the restructuring plan put forward by management last September.
The plan, which included the loss of 30 of its 91 contract and permanent staff, was precipitated by the mounting deficit and disappointing box-office figures. The "restructuring plan" was subsequently frozen, and a number of positions in the company which were threatened, including those of the commissioning editor and the director of the Peacock, were reprieved.
The Abbey's own working review group, in its report, recommended that staffing levels be reduced, that management structures be reassessed and that a consultative forum involving all interests at the theatre be set up. The theatre is also in the process of appointing a successor to the artistic director, Mr Ben Barnes, and has advertised for a director rather than an artistic director.
Earlier in the year the Abbey also had problems in reaching targets for its fund-raising for the centenary year programme of productions and celebrations, but a donation of €500,000 in September from a board member, Ms Loretta Brennan Glucksman, brought the total income of the fund-raising committee to over €3 million.
The Abbey and the Peacock Theatre, which is currently closed, received a grant of €4.55 million from the Arts Council for 2004 and expect to hear at the end of December what funding revenue for next year will be.