The Government has announced a full review into the operations of the Arts Council after Ministers were told €6 million was wasted on a proposed new IT system.
Minister for Arts and Culture Patrick O’Donovan said an initial report initiated by his department last year found the Arts Council was not prepared for the scale of the IT project and did not assign adequate resources to deliver it.
An external review of governance and culture at the body has now been commissioned, he said.
The Arts Council acknowledged “significant” sums were spent on an undelivered project.
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“We take our role as custodian of public money very seriously and for that reason we are engaging with our contractors with a view to seeking legal redress,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The agency said it believes the contractors, selected via a public procurement system, delivered “substandard” work. The council relied heavily on external advice and “took it in good faith”, it said.
The product delivered was “not fit for purpose” and, after being advised the work could be remedied, it continued with the programme “to protect initial investment”.
[ Arts Council’s scrapped €6m IT system sparks fury in CabinetOpens in new window ]
“The development work that followed and ongoing reviews revealed that the deficiencies and bugs were so fundamental, it was not cost effective to continue,” the Arts Council said.
Ministers at Cabinet on Wednesday criticised governance and oversight of the project by both the Department of Arts and the Arts Council.
Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said the whole episode represented “a massive waste of money”.
He and Mr O’Donovan said the project cost had not been properly estimated by the Arts Council.
They also said the Department of Arts and Culture did not have appropriate representation on the project governance structures.
A review of the project published by the department on Wednesday said the Arts Council’s business case “did not meet” the requirements of the Public Spending Code. It said there was “no record” of the proposal being brought to the Arts Council board for approval.
It maintained the department did no formal review that could have queried the level of analysis in the business case or flagged that the business case did not include estimate costs for every key component of the project.
The review said despite changes during the process, there was “no analysis” of additional estimated costs.
“At each milestone, delivery was slower than planned”, between four and 16 weeks behind schedule, with the technology partner blaming the Arts Council for “business processes [which] were greater than expected”.
It said some 17 “change requests” were agreed, adding at least 1,000 man hours to the project. These added €707,770 in expenditure. One change alone cost €286,667.
