Arts Council's botched €6.5m IT project leaves 'accountability' issues still unresolved

The report calls for the development of 'stronger oversight mechanisms for funded bodies' to ensure issues such as the IT project are 'identified early and escalated appropriately'. Picture: Leah Farrell/ RollingNews.ie

Persistent weaknesses in governance, which led to the cancellation of an IT project at the Arts Council, leading to a  €6.5m loss to the taxpayer, still need to be addressed, a new report has said.

The Dáil Public Accounts Committee’s review of the spending debacle, which saw a project to install a single IT interface for the Arts Council pulled before it was delivered in 2022, noted problems with “governance, performance measurement and accountability” remain unresolved in the aftermath of the project collapse.