93. Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the other agencies, along with RTÉ and the Arts Council, under his auspices that have had failed or partially failed multimillion euro IT projects; if he will make full disclosure of when his Department became aware of any issue with each such IT project; and if he will provide the correspondence between his Department and each agency in relation to same. [23118/25]

Sentiment score: -0.26

I will come to this on a different path. This Minister and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, have acted as if some of this information about the Arts Council and RTÉ is new. We know that Deputy Donohoe's former Department of public expenditure was aware of the issues relating to the Arts Council as far back as 2013, and Deputy O'Donovan's Department - even though he was not the head of it - was provided with a large volume of correspondence over the lifespan of the project in the Arts Council. It is so large in fact that the Minister has so far not agreed to publish it. That project was tracking red as early as 2021. I know the Minister has looked for other projects that are costing the taxpayer millions of euro. What other agencies are affected at this stage, other than RTÉ and the Arts Council?

Sentiment score: -0.06

I am glad the Minister raised the issue of Professor Niamh Brennan. This is not a criticism but she carried out a report and review in the culture of governance in RTÉ and she totally missed that this €4 million write-off had been discussed repeatedly by the RTÉ board in 2023, and that there were issues in that project in 2019. Can the Minister in any way assure us in the reviews she is doing that she will not miss other flaws or gaps in the reports from either RTÉ or the Arts Council? This is to ensure that when all of this is finalised, we are assured that the accounts are fully acceptable, but also that any project floundering - as were both IT projects in both organisations from early on - will be scrapped before the expenditure of huge amounts of taxpayers' money.

Sentiment score: 0.32

I did not mean to question her at all. I was just saying that she failed to see the hole in the accounts concerning that €4 million for IT.

Sentiment score: -0.26