The Arts Council has confirmed that applications for grants submitted by the convicted fraudster Samantha Cookes were considered on the basis of their artistic merit and her criminal convictions were not considered as part of the application process.
Cookes, who was sentenced to four years in jail last week after she pleaded guilty to charges of deception and theft, received a total of €36,250 in Arts Council grants in 2021 and 2022.
In May 2019, she was convicted of one count of deception and four counts of theft at the District Court in Fermoy, Co Cork.
The deception charge related to her posing as a child psychologist, where she deceived a father into paying her €840 for a report on a child who needed to be assessed for a special needs assistant.
The four theft charges related to her taking payments of between €100 and €600 from people in Dublin and Wicklow for a subsidised trip to Lapland, which was supposedly being organised for children with additional needs and their families.
The Lapland trip never happened.
Earlier, in 2011, she offered to act as a surrogate mother for a couple in north Yorkshire in England who wanted to have a baby after failed IVF treatment.
She told the couple she was a former surrogate and provided a reference from her previous client, which was bogus.
She accepted expenses and fees from the couple, who grew suspicious when she kept asking for more money.
The couple called in the police, and Cookes was prosecuted at Teeside Crown Court, where she was ordered to pay £1,800 to the couple and was given a nine-month suspended sentence.
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Cookes moved to Ireland in September 2013, and used a variety of names while in the country over the next decade.
As Carrie Jade Williams, living in south Kerry in 2020, she won a prestigious essay-writing competition run by the Financial Times and The Bodley Head, a division of publisher Penguin Random House.
At this time, she was also a writer in residence at the Irish Writers Centre at Cill Rialaig in south Kerry.
For the Arts Council grant applications, she used the name "Jade Cooke" - Jade is her middle name.
In 2021, the Arts Council awarded her a grant of €15,000 as part of a language bursary award.
She was given a further €21,250 in 2022 for a literature project.
RTÉ News asked the Arts Council what checks, if any, were carried out to establish if Cookes had previous criminal convictions for deception and fraud.
The Arts Council said it has a "rigorous" application process.
It said Cookes' applications were considered on the basis of their "artistic merit" and that criminal convictions were not considered as part of the application process.
In a statement to RTÉ News, a spokeswoman for the Arts Council said: "We can confirm that this application was considered and decided on, on its artistic merit.
"The artistic merit of applications is rigorously reviewed. A criminal conviction would not necessarily be a barrier to consideration of an application with artistic merit. Therefore, the issue of criminal conviction is not part of an application process."
The spokeswoman said that, as part of the process, applicants were obliged to complete a report form to mark the completion of the project and draw down payment.
A "declaration of assurance" signed by the applicant and by one other "responsible person" who is involved in the funded activity is also required.
"This is to certify that any Arts Council funding is used for the purpose for which it was granted and that any conditions attached to the funding were met," she said.
Later, she clarified: "A 'responsible person' is someone who takes the responsibility of co-signing the declaration of assurance that the funding is being used for the artistic purpose intended."
The Arts Council said it has not modified its grant aid processes since Cookes was awarded her two grants.
However, the spokeswoman added that these processes are under "continuous review" and would be changed if the need arose.
