Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I am trying to repair it. I would apologise to any members of the artistic community who feel that they were affected. There were over 100 people from across the creative community employed by that show and a lot of the money was spent on those people - paying them to do stuff. I read that article today. It does not make pretty reading at all. If that was the way the show was bring run, it is another contributory factor to why it failed. When you try creative ideas, sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. I do not know a huge amount about creatively how it was run. I have been more focused on how the money got spent, why that was not prevented and what procedures were in place. I know some of the senior people who worked on that production who are very professional and who work for RTÉ. From what I have been told, some extremely talented people were brought in who have got international experience so I was quite surprised to read that it was so chaotic. All I can say is, in the circumstances I know the people who worked on it creatively did their absolute best to try and make it a success and they should take none of the blame for it.