Ms Maureen Kennelly:

As I said, the project started in 2017 and was not simply about replacing a grant management system. Rather, it was about bringing five different systems into one. Sanction was sought from our line Department and funding was received in September 2019. At that stage, the project was worth €3 million. A contractor was appointed from the OGP and began its work in April 2020. As everybody knows, that was at the start of Covid.

There are three factors which we know are responsible for the failure of the project. I will take the Deputy through the history. The substandard work from the contractors became clear quite early. At the end of the year, there were faults and huge staff turnover. Four solution architects and two programme managers left the company. There was a lot of staff turnover in the main developer.

We flagged and alerted the council and Department about these matters in early 2021. Remedial action would then be taken and the project would get back on track. I would like to reassure the committee that, while the level of expenditure is very distressing, at every twist, turn and juncture people tried their best to get this back on track. The general advice was that we should keep going at the project and if we spent a little bit more we would see our way through another gateway. We took the best advice available at those very critical junctures.

In September 2022, multiple systems failures were discovered. We parted company with two of the companies, a quality assurance company and the technology developer. We sought advice from another contractor to help us to understand whether this was worth sticking with and could be rescued. The advice from it, after quite a lot of detailed discussion and an external review, was that it could indeed be rescued and was worth sticking with. At that stage, we brought in a senior resource from outside. We did not have a senior IT resource, and that was one of the huge failings of the project all the way through. I am glad to say that-----