Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the witnesses. I acknowledge that I previously worked in an arts venue. It was a local theatre in Monaghan. I am very familiar with the arts package the Arts Council is trying to get rid of. I agree it is a very difficult system to use and it needs to be upgraded. The systems are outdated and it is disappointing for the sector that the project was not a success.

It is incredibly disappointing for the taxpayer that so much money was wasted, just to put that on the record. The IT projects are an area that seems to be particularly problematic in terms of the cost right across all sectors, if the witnesses would be in agreement with that. I have no doubt this committee will engage with other Departments to ensure this does not happen during my Dáil term going forward. IT systems seem to be prevalent at the moment in all media and in all sections of Departments across the board. I want to say at the outset that it is important to make sure this is not running across all Departments. This has to be stopped. This has happened and €6.7 million in taxpayers' money was utterly wasted. Somebody has to hold responsibility for that. There seems to be a systemic issue across the public sector and that is what I want to get into today.

My first question to the board members today is whether they requested or enlist assistance from the Office of Government Procurement and the chief executive officer of the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform or any other internal government expertise at the outset.