Timing is key to O'Conor's reign at music academy

ANALYSIS:Use of public money by the Royal Irish Academy of Music comes under scrutiny today

PUBLIC PERCEPTION of pianist John O’Conor has changed a lot since last May’s announcement that he was to stand down as director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM), while staying as a piano teacher.

It was not until early in December that the background to his departure became clearer. A report from the Comptroller and Auditor General looked into the remuneration and expenses of the director of the RIAM for the academic year beginning in September 2008.

In the mild language of the report’s summary, O’Conor’s overall remuneration package was found to be “higher than that of benchmarked post holders when account is taken of the agreed time commitment”.

For the academic year beginning in September 2008, he received €225,524 for two part-time posts, as piano teacher and as the institution’s director. As director he was required to work 1,080 hours a year, and to attend the academy for “34 full weeks per academic year”, with annual leave of 10 weeks.

As a piano teacher he was obliged to put in 374 teaching hours per year between September and June. For this, he was paid €65,000, which, the report noted was “a higher rate than that paid to any other member of the teaching staff” and was “not linked to the salary of a teaching grade”.

The pianist was also involved in the presentation of a two-day seminar for piano teachers, for which the RIAM provided both the premises and administrative support. The fees (€220 per head) were shared 50/50 between O’Conor and the academy, and the profits from sales of a seminar handbook all went to O’Conor – netting him €21,698 in 2008.

But the big interest has been in his expenses – €22,963 for hospitality (some in his home), €5,325 for travel, and €1,322 for sundries, including meals at Patrick Guilbaud’s double Michelin-starred restaurant.

Irregularities in the expenses claims included the absence of original invoices or receipts, the failure to declare the business purpose for which they were incurred, and the lack of the chairman’s signature on the monthly claim sheets.

The academy has had a new director, Deborah Kelleher, since September, and it is she who is to face the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee today, when it delves more deeply into the issues.

The academy has, of course, been putting its house in order, and Kelleher has the benefit neither of the salary nor expenses regime that O’Conor enjoyed. She was not involved in his arrangements, and there is, presumably, a lot that went on between O’Conor and his board that she will never know about.

O’Conor is a skilled businessman as well as a skilled performer. It’s not for nothing that he was the person who spearheaded the creation of the Dublin International Piano Competition back in 1988, and secured from GPA what was then said to be the single biggest arts sponsorship in Ireland.

The big failure at the academy has been one of governance. It was perfectly reasonable for O’Conor to have sought whatever level of remuneration he felt he deserved. It was up to the board of governors to ensure that state funding of the academy – about €4 million in 2009 – was properly applied. O’Conor has already suffered. He’s lost a plum position and found his lifestyle subjected to sceptical scrutiny in national newspapers. But it would be really surprising if the failings of the archaic structures through which the academy is governed were not to be seriously revamped as a result of what has come to light.

It would be even more surprising, however, if O’Conor’s record in office was not scrutinised. One effect of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report was on O’Conor’s website. Soon after it was issued, the record of his monthly schedule as performer, competition jury member and international teacher from 2003 to 2010 was removed. When the full schedule was available, it revealed that O’Conor listed professional performances or commitments for 186 days between September 2008 and August 2009. He worked in places as far apart as Hannover, Honolulu, Turkey, Toronto, Colorado and Italy.

It must surely have taken time beyond the 186 days to get to all his destinations? And some of the engagements would have entailed rehearsal time with orchestras or chamber music partners, for engagements where the schedule listed only the actual performance. And in the academic year in question, there was the matter of assessing the 20- to 30-minute recordings and CVs submitted by the 150 young pianists seeking a place in the 2009 Axa Dublin International Piano Competition, of which he is artistic director and jury chairman – that’s somewhere between one and two weeks of solid listening. And, of course, as a performer, he had to find time to practise the piano, too.

The big issue, surely, is not the matter of the expensive meals, or even the unusually generous remuneration package to which his board had agreed. It has to be how a man who spent more than half his year focused on other work can possibly have found the hours in the day to meet the contractual obligations of his two academy posts.

Michael Dervan is music critic of The Irish Times