Abbey in financial mess as theatre bosses quit

THE artistic director and managing director of the Abbey Theatre are to step down as the national theatre spirals further into deficit, it emerged last night.

With an accumulated deficit of €2.4 million, the theatre is about €900,000 worse off than it had projected. An accounting error is being blamed.

The theatre’s artistic director, Ben Barnes, and managing director Brian Jackson brought the problem to the national theatre’s board of directors on Tuesday and offered their resignations.

The board officially accepted the resignations late yesterday and released a statement saying the Abbey’s “financial reporting system was under-recording the emerging deficit for 2004”.

Mr Barnes has repeatedly been in trouble with the Abbey’s board of directors.

In September 2004, he first faced a motion of no confidence when the theatre’s ballooning deficit became apparent. Poor general management, a heavily criticised artistic programme and poor audience attendances were blamed.

Shortly after surviving the motion of no confidence in September last year, a leaked email written by Mr Barnes containing criticisms of the Abbey’s board meant he had again to defend his job. The board agreed to allow him see out his term as artistic director after he apologised for the criticisms.

However, despite being awarded a further €2m from the Government and an additional “stabilisation grant” of €1m from the Arts Council recently, the Abbey has again to report bad financial news.

While Mr Barnes was to see out his contract until next December, he will now be replaced by Fiach MacConghail, ex-adviser to the Minister for Arts, “with immediate effect”, an Abbey statement said.

Mr MacConghail was appointed director designate in February, but was originally not to take over from Mr Barnes until December.

A former artistic director of the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, from 1992 to 1999, Mr MacConghail is in his early 40s and has years of experience working in the arts. A Dublin native, he was Ireland’s cultural director at Expo 2000 in Germany and was also the commissioner of the cultural programme for Ireland’s EU presidency in 2004.

Mr Barnes and Mr Jackson were not available for comment last night.