Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The appropriation account for Vote 33 records gross expenditure of slightly more than €1.1 billion in 2023. Appropriations-in-aid of the Vote amounted to €218 million. The surplus of the amount provided over the net amount applied in the year was €56.4 million. The Department received permission to carry over €21.5 million in unspent 2023 capital allocations for spending in 2024. The remaining €34.9 million was liable for surrender back to the Exchequer.

The appropriation account is presented under five programme headings reflecting the title of the Vote. Under each of the programmes, the Department provides funding to a wide range of public bodies, including the key national cultural institutions, broadcasting, sport, tourism and language bodies. Many of these bodies operate under their own statutory remits. In addition to the strategic policy and legislative role it undertakes in respect of those bodies, the Department plays key roles in assessing the adequacy of their governance arrangements, budget setting and funding provision and in assessing their performance and outcomes. Specifically in the context of today's meeting, I draw attention to the payment from the Vote in 2023 of slightly more than €130 million as core funding for the Arts Council, while the National Gallery received €13.4 million for its general expenses.

Members may also wish to note the payment in 2023 of grant funding of €195 million to RTÉ, including unplanned interim funding of €16 million. On the receipts side, television licence fee receipts into the Vote were estimated at €237 million but the outturn was significantly lower at just over €201 million. This represented a 9% reduction in aggregate licence fee receipts year on year.

The functions of the Arts Council are to promote public interest, knowledge, appreciation and practice of the arts as well as assisting in improving standards in the arts. The Arts Council is almost exclusively State-funded from Vote 33. In 2023, its income from the Vote totalled €133.7 million out of total income recorded of €135.7 million. The council's expenditure in 2023 was €143 million. Almost 85% of this was accounted for by grant payments to support individual artists and arts organisations. A further €7.7 million was spent on arts initiatives. The council's staff costs amounted to €7.4 million and administration costs totalled €6.9 million in 2023.

I certified the 2023 financial statements on 24 June 2024 and I issued a clear audit opinion. However, I drew attention to the termination of a project to develop a new integrated grants management system. The original budget set for the project was approximately €3 million with an expected delivery date at the end of 2021. Work on the development of the system had cost €6.5 million to June 2024, when the project was discontinued. The overall loss of value in respect of the project to June 2024 is estimated at €5.3 million. The balance of €1.2 million is considered to be reusable in the implementation of an off-the-shelf grants management system. I note that, while I certified the financial statements in June 2024, they were presented to the Oireachtas only on 12 February 2025. It is normally expected that accounts would be lodged in the Oireachtas Library within three months of certification.

The National Galley of Ireland's financial statements for 2023 indicate it had income of €18.7 million, down from €20.45 million in 2022. In 2023, almost 78% of the gallery's income came from Exchequer cash grants via Vote 33. The gallery's expenditure in 2023 amounted to €15.6 million. The total comprehensive surplus for the year was €448,000. In the prior year, there was a loss of €1.22 million. I certified the 2023 financial statements on 30 October 2024 and issued a clear audit opinion. However, I drew attention to ineffective expenditure on an X-ray machine. The National Gallery acquired the machine in 2017 at a cost of just under €125,000 to provide for non-destructive examination of collection items. The cost of the machine was capitalised at that time but we identified that the asset had never actually been brought into use because a suitable location was not available in the gallery's premises. As a result, there was a loss of value of public resources used to acquire it.

The report before the committee today examines the usefulness of the Department's published performance information. We focused on the information presented about two of the Department's main voted expenditure programmes: arts and culture, and sports and recreation. Relevant, accurate and timely performance information is an important tool in ensuring the quality of public services and enabling public accountability about how well public expenditure is used. It has the potential to help public bodies operate more efficiently and effectively while also enabling stakeholders to understand and evaluate the outcomes being achieved. However, if managed poorly, a performance information framework has the potential to descend into a mere box-ticking exercise that adds little or no value.

The examination found that the Department has significantly increased the set of performance measures and indicators it includes in the presentation of Vote 33 in the annual Revised Estimates for Public Services in recent years. However, we also found that substantial areas of expenditure were not supported by relevant performance measures. For example, for the arts programme, on which €347 million was expended in 2023, the Department has articulated 14 high-level strategic objectives but corresponding output measures or targets were articulated in respect of only six of those strategies. Where measures did exist, it was often unclear what constituted good performance. In addition, many of the context and impact indicators were outdated or of limited relevance as they lacked associated targets.

Performance measurement frameworks need to change over time to keep up with changes in the organisation's strategic objectives. It may be appropriate to remove measures that are no longer useful or relevant or to adjust how performance is tracked. The report recommends that the Department should conduct an evaluation of its performance information system to ensure it is using effective measures that best enable it to assess and report transparently on the extent to which it is achieving value for the public money it spends.