Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely understand, as we all do, the precarious nature of being an artist from a financial point of view. I appreciate the deep disappointment and heartbreak of those who thought they had the award and discovered seven minutes later they did not. The director of the Arts Council has even spoken on radio and apologised profusely. The council emailed all the applicants to inform them of the error within seven minutes and apologised unreservedly. It was an unfortunate administrative error, but key to this in building trust is that the council has now put in place additional checks for the issue of decision letters to prevent a repeat of this error. As I said, the council is in the process of updating its computerised grant application awards and payments system and that is expected to be live next year.

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