The director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly, wanted to stay in her role, but Minister for Arts Patrick O’Donovan “did not consent to a second term”, she told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
Ms Kennelly, who has been in the role since April 2020, is due to step down next month. She told the committee she wanted to continue her work as director, but Mr O’Donovan did not grant her a second five-year term.
Government sources confirmed that Ms Kennelly was not offered a second term but was offered an extension of her existing term while the investigation into an abandoned €6.7 million IT system continued.
She said she was “very disappointed” that her contract had not been extended as she had “great plans for the organisation” and the board “fully supported” her.
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“There were a number of reforms that I brought in, and there were a number of other reforms that I really wanted to see through. So it’s a source of great disappointment that I won’t be able to see those through,” she said.
Ms Kennelly said she believed that all her “predecessors in living memory” had been granted a second term. She said she was offered “a short-term contract, which I deemed unacceptable”.
According to sources with knowledge of the exchanges, Ms Kennelly was offered a nine-month extension of her current contract. This was because, as there is an investigation under way, the Minister was unwilling to sanction a full reappointment for five years at this point.
“We are trying to form a complete picture of the culture and governance of the Arts Council which she has been leading for the last five years,” a source involved in the process said.
“Until we can fully understand what happened, and who was responsible, it would be remiss of the Minister to blindly reappoint someone for a five-year term.”
The department did not comment on the issue when asked about the decision on Thursday night.
Asked if Mr O’Donovan did not grant Ms Kennelly a second term because of the IT project controversy, Feargal Ó Coigligh, secretary general at the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, said: “The Minister sanctioned the contract that he deemed appropriate.”
The PAC was told how the Arts Council is trying to recoup about €4 million lost through the botched IT project. Committee members heard the organisation had started legal proceedings against two contractors and was in the “pre-action stage” in relation to two others.
“We are vigorously pursuing our cases to reduce the loss to the taxpayer,” Ms Kennelly told the committee.
She said the council needed to modernise its IT systems and integrate five systems into one.
The council “engaged external contractors to manage and deliver the work, as we did not have the internal resources to deliver this large-scale project”, she said.
Ms Kennelly said, after some delays, “multiple bugs were discovered” with the new system in 2022. She said every effort was made to “rescue it”, but ultimately this could not be done.
Mr Ó Coigligh said he was “very annoyed” that so much public money was lost through the failed IT scheme, adding that it “shouldn’t have happened”.
“Mistakes were made, and we put up our hands that mistakes were made,” he said.
The Minister has established an expert advisory committee, led by Prof Niamh Brennan, to review the governance and organisational culture at the Arts Council, Mr Ó Coigligh said.
