The number of staff employed at the Arts Council has more than tripled in less than a decade, while spending on consultants amounts to more than €9 million since 2019, an examination of the body’s annual reports shows.
Staffing at the council has increased from 36 people employed full-time in 2015 to 114 in 2023, the reports disclose. Staffing has more than doubled since 2020.
Public funding for the Arts Council has surged in the last 10 years on foot of a government commitment to increase arts funding and the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw a sharp increase in “emergency” funding – which the council retained after the pandemic ended.
In 2014, the council received €57 million in public funding; by 2023, that had grown to €130 million. This year, it will receive €140 million.
The annual reports note spending on various types of consultants grew from €816,000 in 2019 to €2.7 million in 2022, before falling to €1.8 million in 2023.
Meanwhile, differences have emerged between the council and the Department of Arts as to when escalating problems with the botched IT project at the Arts Council – which ended up wasting at least €5.3 million – were first alerted to the department.
Two sources with knowledge of the council‘s board proceedings have contradicted suggestions by the department that the full extent of the problems around the abandoned IT project was only disclosed by the council in mid-2024.
Both sources said the issue was first discussed by the main board of the council in July 2021 and at every subsequent board meeting after that. “We never tried to hide the problems that were emerging. We informed the department about them at every step of the way,” said one source.
The source pointed to the council’s 2023 annual report, published earlier this week, which explicitly said the department was made aware of the difficulties in 2021.
[ Who’s who in the controversy over Arts Council spendingOpens in new window ]
But the department insisted on Friday night that while there were “flows of information” from the council, there was “no formal process ... to escalate warnings to senior management or the minister in respect of IT projects in bodies under the remit of the department”.
Amid the growing blame game, Minister for Arts and Culture Patrick O’Donovan is now expected to order a root-and-branch review of his department in the wake of the controversy.
It is understood the review will look at how the department deals with the 20 agencies that come under its remit, including governance, oversight, the chain of command and reporting relationships.
Former minister for arts Catherine Martin did not respond on Friday night when asked if she would attend at an Oireachtas committee to answer questions on the controversy.
Elsewhere, The Irish Times has established that the three main IT consultants that worked on the Arts Council project – Ergo, Codec and Expleo – continue to carry out extensive work for Government departments and State bodies.
Figures released to Social Democrat TD Aidan Farrelly show Ergo has received more than €7 million since the start of 2023 for work with various departments. Codec received €4.56 million while Expleo received €3.68 million from the Department of Agriculture.
There was no comment from the companies. Ergo claims to have more than 300 public sector clients. Codec says its clients include the HSE, the Health Information and Quality Authority, the National Transport Authority and the Environmental Protection Agency.
