Opposition TDs demand consequences for €6.6m 'incinerated' by Arts Council

Tánaiste Simon Harris  acknowledged that people can make mistakes, but said that in his view this was 'a very clear and flagrant breach of the public spending code'

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said: 'If there is no cost to this, there will be no change.' Picture: Flickr/Houses of Oireachtas

Senior civil servants should pay the price for wasting public money, an opposition TD has said, as the Tánaiste promised consequences for the Art Council debacle.

Responding to the outcry from the opposition benches over the revelation that the Arts Council spent €6.6m on an IT system that was never delivered, Simon Harris said there has to be consequences.

However, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said the government is a consequence and accountability-free zone.

He said the Arts Council "incinerated" almost €7m of State funding and that Government is "shrugging their shoulders" and "pleading ignorance".

"This culture of evasion, of dodging, of delaying, of obfuscating, is coming from the top and is seeping into every level of senior civil service," said Mr Tóibín.

There has to be a cost to the senior civil servants in terms of this waste and that cost should be up to and including the loss of a person's job. If there is no cost to this, there will be no change.

Mr Harris said the public are getting sick and tired of public money not being spent adequately and "finding that there are individuals who are often somewhat anonymous in relation to those issues".

He acknowledged that people can make mistakes, but said that in his view this was "a very clear and flagrant breach of the public spending code".

Mr Harris said the Government will establish an external review in the coming week and report to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

He said it is important when the new PAC is established that it looks into it and he himself would be looking at the companies involved in the project and the people "who made significant amounts of money and profited from this".

Social Democrats TD Aidan Farrelly said the review is a way to "kick to touch for a while" while there was also criticism from some TDs that eleven weeks after the general election, no committees have been established and will not be for a number of weeks.

With no ability to call people before a committee, Labour leader Ivana Bacik has called for a debate on the "shambolic" management of the project to be held in the Dáil next week.

Ms Bacik said the matter has raised serious questions about governance both at the Arts Council and the Department of Arts and Culture which she noted has been "dogged by controversies about overspends and lack of oversight over semi-state organisations".