By Mary Regan
The Department of Arts, Culture, the Gaeltacht and Sports has instructed the chair of the Arts Council to draw up a report on an alleged incident that took place on June 19.
The Secretary General of the Department, Fergal 脫 Coiglgh has told an Oireachtas Commitee he was alerted last Thursday to an alleged incident which was a cause of “concern” given recent controversies at the agency .
He confirmed the Department had also written to the Data Protection Commissioner, as was reported in Saturday’s Irish Independent.
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It is alleged that a “serious data breach” took place after an individual entered headquarters to obtain documents.
Mr 脫 Coogligh was responding to questions from the Fine Gael Senator, Garrett Aherne, who said this was an “incredible” development.
“It would feed into problems at the Arts Council and senior levels of the Arts Council that things like this would happen,” he said.
The Arts Council, which is the national government body for funding and promoting the arts, has been embroiled in controversy since it emerged in February that it spent 鈧6.7million on an IT project that was subsequently abandoned.
This sparked a full external review of the operations of the Council, which was ordered into the spending by the Arts Minister Patrick O鈥橠onovan.
The Minister said at the time that the project had been 鈥渄rawn to a shuttering end鈥 in June and July last year, when his predecessor, Catherine Martin, was in charge of the Department.
He said a review had found that the Council was not prepared for the scale of the project and that it did not put in place adequate resources to deliver it.
At a recent meeting of the Dail鈥檚 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) the Council said it 鈥済reatly regrets鈥 the money spent on the system which was abandoned in 2024.
The former Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly, told the Committee that via the ongoing cases 鈥渨e would be hopeful of getting most of the money back.鈥
Ms Kennelly whose five-year term came to an end earlier this month, said she would have liked to have stayed in place in the Council but despite the board of the Council making a 鈥渧ery strong business case鈥 for her to stay in the role, the Minister did not consent to her reappointment.
Minister O’Donovan is due to appear before the Committee on Communications today to discuss policy issues at his Department.