Mr. Feargal Ó Coigligh:

This was very much focused on the Arts Council. The Chair has raised legitimate questions more generally about small bodies delivering ICT projects. That is a very valid point. One of the recommendations is to ensure that if the Arts Council embarks on this again using public money, it is set up to deliver it but to control it. Looking at the history of the project, there was a lot of project creep. The scope of the project expanded and the complexity expanded. There was a whole issue around not only delivering a complex ICT project but also making it more and more complex as it went ahead. That is a fundamental issue too. There is the issue of the expertise and the issue of the project scope. Even without a centralised body to do everything on behalf of all public bodies, there is a question mark around how one ensures that the projects are properly managed. There are things we can do and there are new safeguards in place. For example, if we were to embark on that again today, we would be required to set up a completely external peer group which has no skin in the game to just look at it and be able to say “No, that won’t work” or “That will work” and ask the tough questions. We did not have that in place at the time.