The Minister for Arts Patrick O’Donovan refused to wait until the results of an external review into the spending of €6.75 million on an abandoned IT system before deciding not to appoint director Maureen Kennelly for a further five-year term.
The council said the board “are in unanimous agreement that it was essential that the decision on the director’s contract be deferred until the external review is concluded and the findings are available, and had requested this. This request was subsequent to a business case that had been made by the board in December 2024, which recommended a renewal for the director for a further five years.”
However, the Department of Arts confirmed that Mr O’Donovan “would consider a proposal from the council for one further appointment of the director for up to nine months”, said the council.
The council was told “there is no mechanism to defer a decision on the director’s contract”.
“The board of the Arts Council deeply regrets this situation,” it said.
The council and department confirmed that, contrary to previous briefings by Government sources to The Irish Times, Ms Kennelly was not offered an extension of her existing contract, but rather a new contract of nine months duration only.
Ms Kennelly did not accept the offer of a new nine-month contract.
In February, the Government announced a full review into the operations of the council after hearing €6.75 million was spent on a proposed new IT system that has since been abandoned.
Mr O’Donovan said an initial report commissioned by his department last year found the council was not prepared for the scale of the IT project and did not assign adequate resources to deliver it.
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Tánaiste Simon Harris said he was “furious” upon learning the news and said the matter raised serious questions about the governance and controls within the agency.
Council representatives – including Ms Kennelly and chairwoman Maura McGrath – are likely to be questioned on the controversy today when they appear at the Oireachtas Arts and Media committee.
Ms Kennelly will tell the committee that she “deeply” regrets the loss of public funds.
She will also tell the committee the council has “commenced legal proceedings against two contractors and are in the pre-action stage in relation to two others. We are vigorously pursuing our cases to reduce the loss to the taxpayer.”
However, it is not clear if the department s the pursuit of potentially expensive legal actions.
