Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport
Arts Council Grant Management IT System: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Polycarp Anyanwu:
Yes. It was intended to have five systems together, including the finance system. When I joined the business transformation programme, along with my other colleague, in early 2024, we had to do a cost-benefit analysis around whether we should continue with the system under development or were there other alternatives. It became clear to us that instead of trying to get more resources to internally work on the existing system we considered the issue of support for the systems and what is good practice at this stage. We decided to go for the commercial off-the-shelf for the grant-management system and finance system. Then we viewed the interface integration between the two. That would help us achieve what we were trying to achieve in 2018 in a much cheaper and more risk-free way.