Minister for Culture Patrick O’Donovan is due to visit the Arts Council today in the wake of several controversies and issues at the State agency.
Mr O’Donovan will meet a select number of staff at the national art agency’s Dublin city centre office. The Minister is understood to have wanted to meet the Arts Council before the Dáil recess after several months of public controversy for the body.
The meeting comes as the Data Protection Commission (DPC) has confirmed it has written to the council after concerns were raised about personal information collected from artists applying for grants.
It had emerged that concerns had been raised within the council that sensitive personal data may not have been stored and handled in line with General Data Protection Regulation requirements.
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About 1,700 people had applied for a bursary earlier this year via a form that collected information about an applicant’s gender, ethnicity, sexual identity and religion.
The data protection concerns became public following the release of internal council emails to news website The Currency. Stephanie O’Callaghan, the creative arts director at the agency, had warned colleagues that artists had raised concerns about the questions asked during the application process.
The Data Protection Commissioner has now written to the council seeking more information about the issue.
In a statement, the Data Protection Commission said: “The DPC made contact with the Arts Council last week in relation to this matter and we are currently engaging with them. We are not in a position to comment any further at this stage.”
It is the second time in recent months that the council has come to the attention of the DPC. It was claimed that a former employee had taken files from the council office in a separate alleged data breach.
Feargal Ó Coigligh, the secretary general at the Department of Culture, ordered the council to carry out a review of the incident.
In February, Mr O’Donovan revealed that the council had spent €6.7 million on a botched IT project, with almost nothing to show for it.
The project was designed to reform the system that the council uses to receive and process funding applications from artists. The doomed project was finally shelved towards the end of 2023 with an estimated loss of at least €5.3 million.
