The Arts Council has said it "greatly regrets" spending €6.7 million on a complex IT project that was later abandoned, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has heard.
The Arts Council and the National Gallery of Ireland's appearance before PAC explored a range of issues, from IT systems failures to the difficulties of housing an x-ray scanner at the gallery.
The IT system, which was ultimately abandoned in 2024, was described as "a failure' to Committee members.
Committee members each had fifteen minutes to question the representatives and much of the time was spent drilling into the details of the IT procurement of the system.
Sinn Féin TD Cathy Bennett said that "€6.7 million in tax payers money was utterly wasted, so somebody has to hold responsibility for that".
The Arts Council representatives confirmed that the Council is now pursuing legal cases against two of the IT contractors involved in the project, and are in the pre-action stage in relation to two others.
The Council is optimistic that they can recoup at least €3 million from the contractors and are "vigorously" pursuing the cases to reduce the loss to the taxpayer.
Fine Gael TD Grace Boland questioned the Council on this legal bill, asking if they were clear on the possible cost risks for pursuing the cases.
"We don't want to be back here in a year after racking up costs," she said.
The Council confirmed that it has spent €60,000 so far on legal fees in relation to these cases.
Director of the Arts Council Maureen Kennelly, explained the background to the project saying that work to modernise IT systems and integrate five systems into one began because their systems date back to 2008.
"They are not integrated and are difficult to use," she said.
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"Everything on this project was procured under public procurement guidelines," she added, stating that the Council used the Office of Government Procurement Framework, and the main contractor was on the OGP approved ICT framework.
It began with a €3 million budget originally, but over the following years, the costs grew.
In summary, she said, a "lack of internal expertise, poor performance by our contractors and also the impact of Covid-19, all contributed to the project failure."
Ms Kennelly then outlined how the project unfolded, saying that as the Council approached the expected delivery of the system in September 2022, a year later than initially planned, "multiple bugs were discovered".
This sub-standard work meant the project could not move forward to completion.
The Council then ended contracts with both the testers and developers, and after seeking expert advice they began work to "rectify and complete the programme".
Ms Kennelly told the Committee that they kept getting advice from experts that "if we spent another sum of money, we could get the project finished".
She said that system development was then paused, and it ultimately stopped following a Board decision, with the input of the Government Chief Information Officer, in June 2024.
Fergal Ó Coigligh, Secretary General of the Department of Arts agreed with this viewpoint, saying that in the months leading up to the project, the narrative became "one more push and we will get it across the line, don't stop it now, we'll lose €2 million, €3 million, €4 million until it becomes too late".
Another issue that came up for discussion was Ms Kennelly's own role within the Council.
She confirmed that she had requested a second term as director as she had many plans for the organisation and was keen to continue with the work.
She had the backing of the board for her request, however, Minister for Arts Patrick O'Donovan did not grant the second contract.
She told PAC that she was "very disappointed" at his decision.
Meanwhile, there was a sharp focus on the role of the Department in its supports and guidance for the Arts Council.
Fianna Fáil TD Catherine Ardagh asked: "Are there safe guards now in place to make sure things are on track, because it looks like here that the Arts Council was really crying out for help?"
Mr Ó Coigligh pointed to failures and gaps in past systems and he told the PAC that his Department "failed" to properly exercise its oversight function and that "we should have intervened more actively and much sooner" to reduce the exposure to the tax payer of this failed project.
Mr Ó'Coigligh said that the Minister has established an Expert Advisory Committee led by Professor Niamh Brennan to review the Governance and Organisational Culture in the Arts Council, while a parallel review of the Department's internal governance operations is also under way with the assistance of the IPA.
The National Gallery of Ireland team was also present and led by Director Dr Caroline Campbell.
The team was at the Committee hearing to explain why the gallery had purchased a scanner for €125,000, which has yet to be made operational.
Dr Campbell said that that there are challenges about storage of the scanner in a safe and workable area, which has led this year to a contract being awarded for the construction of a "dedicated lead-lined cabinet" which should last for 25 years.
Dr Campbell said that manufacture of the custom designed x-ray cabinet will "commence shortly", with the expected delivery, installation and operation of the x-ray system, before the end of year.
She added that all costs associated with it will be borne from the resources generated by the Gallery and not from the Exchequer.
However, there were questions about this from Independent TD Catherine Connolly who wanted to know more about the original plans for the scanner back in the business case in 2017.
"€225,000 will be spent on a self-contained lead cabinet - was it not clear at the time that it would require lead lining?" she asked.
Dr Campbell said that there was a room identified at the time, but that room subsequently had to be re purposed, which led the gallery team to explore other options before commissioning the cabinet.
