Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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91. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to provide details from all agencies under his remit of capital projects that cost more than €500,000 and were either abandoned or materially failed to be delivered; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22926/25]

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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93. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the other agencies, along with RTÉ and the Arts Council, under his auspices that have had failed or partially failed multimillion euro IT projects; if he will make full disclosure of when his Department became aware of any issue with each such IT project; and if he will provide the correspondence between his Department and each agency in relation to same. [23118/25]

Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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This question is to ask the Minister to provide details for all agencies under his Department's remit of capital projects costing more than €500,000 that were either abandoned or materially failed to be delivered, and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 91 and 93 together.

I thank the Deputy. Following my appointment as Minister, issues were brought to my attention regarding a failed ICT project in the Arts Council and an unused X-ray machine in the National Gallery. Both projects were funded directly from my Department. Given the serious nature of the issues, I wanted assurance in relation to capital expenditure in other areas under the aegis of my Department. I therefore requested the Secretary General to write to all the State bodies under our aegis in the culture, sport and media sectors seeking information with regard to expenditure on capital projects since 2020 to provide assurance to me and, more importantly, the public, regarding the management of the capital expenditure. Bodies were asked to provide budgetary information on capital projects costing more than €500,000 since 2020. In addition, bodies were asked to identify if there were other capital projects below this level that should be brought to the Department’s attention for any other reason such as where there has been significant expenditure on projects that were abandoned or have materially failed to deliver on their objective.

I recently received a report from my officials in respect of this aspect. The responses received provide assurance that there are not widespread issues similar to those that arose at the Arts Council and the National Gallery. However, an issue was identified in the RTÉ response relating to expenditure on one ICT project. I was concerned about this and I met with the director general on 8 April to discuss further the background to the project, the reasons for the failure to deliver and assurance that this would not happen again.

I asked for written confirmation of the measures in place to protect against such a project failure in the future. The director general subsequently wrote to me last week and his response noted that an external review of this project had taken place in 2023 and the lessons from that report have been incorporated into all major capital projects. RTÉ has taken a number of steps over the past 18 months aimed at mitigating the risk of such an issue recurring. While it is disappointing this happened, it is important to note that it is in the context of a significant number of substantial projects delivered annually by the broadcaster.

Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I commend the Minister on instructing his Department to initiate this exercise and on providing transparency regarding what may be a huge waste of public money by multiple bodies under the aegis of his Department. Unfortunately for him, these wastes of money seem to follow him. When he was previously Minister with responsibility for the OPW, there were issues with money being wasted, such as the €1.4 million spent on a security hut and the €330,000 spent on the Leinster House bike shed. He will say he is not responsible for this and I understand that, but what he must do is identify who is responsible and address it. This should not be with more window-dressing to ensure there is never the opportunity for this to happen again.

These constant financial scandals would bring down governments elsewhere but they are unfortunately par for the course here. With uncertainty in the world due to Trump's tariffs and not knowing what may happen with the Ukraine war, financial responsibility is of utmost importance. If our economy hits any bump in the road at all, it will fall flat on its face with all this public waste of money.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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I do not know if there is a question there. There is certainly a big statement, and I have addressed that statement previously with regard to the OPW. The Deputy will appreciate the Accounting Officer for the OPW came before the finance committee and the public accounts committee and laid out in real terms what happened with regard to the Office of Public Works. No more than I did not know what happened in RTÉ, I had no detail with regard to the OPW. I know this predates the Deputy, but significant time was spent questioning RTÉ officials in these Houses regarding its previous financial performances, the collapse of the licence fee and their contractual obligations as a broadcaster and everything else. This was never unearthed. The Deputy is right, and I appreciate that she has acknowledged that once I became Minister and realised there was a significant problem in the Arts Council and another in the National Gallery, I took it upon myself to ask if there were others. It is on that basis that I am addressing it. However, and I have addressed this issue previously, whether in the Department of Health, or with regard to expenditure in individual schools, in the Department of Education, Ministers cannot possibly be expected to know individual day-to-day expenditures. That is what Accounting Officers are for and that is why we have decision-makers in bodies. That is why I have taken it upon myself to ask those people responsible for this to come forward with explanations. That is what has happened in this case but I appreciate the comments the Deputy made at the start.

Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The Arts Council's €7 million IT project failure and RTÉ's €3.6 million IT project failure are the headlines, instead of €10.3 million being spent wisely and well. Let us think of all the sports clubs, musicians and arts and cultural bodies that could have done so much with more than €10 million. It simply cannot continue, and I commend the Minister on his efforts to address it. Sinn Féin wants to see all semi-State bodies under the remit of the State auditor and I hope the Government will support that going forward. This is seen as international best practice. The Government could move to do that today if it were really interested in ending this constant waste of public money. Time will tell whether it supports that in the near future.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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We have beaten the Deputy to it because RTÉ has been put under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General and all State entities, including An Post and the other ones I will be taking responsibility for once there is a transfer of function order, come under the auspices of NewERA, which to all intents and purposes is a holding agency or accounting body to keep a watchful eye on the semi-State sector to make sure the public is properly represented. We are doing that. I go back to the central point. The Deputy is right that €10 million used by the Arts Council and RTÉ would make a huge difference to individual sports clubs. What I am going through at the moment is an investigative process to find out what happened and who is responsible. I am sure the Oireachtas committees on public accounts and media, now they are up and running, will probably want to examine this as well. They may well unearth something we have not, and if they do, I will welcome that as well.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I will come to this on a different path. This Minister and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, have acted as if some of this information about the Arts Council and RTÉ is new. We know that Deputy Donohoe's former Department of public expenditure was aware of the issues relating to the Arts Council as far back as 2013, and Deputy O'Donovan's Department - even though he was not the head of it - was provided with a large volume of correspondence over the lifespan of the project in the Arts Council. It is so large in fact that the Minister has so far not agreed to publish it. That project was tracking red as early as 2021. I know the Minister has looked for other projects that are costing the taxpayer millions of euro. What other agencies are affected at this stage, other than RTÉ and the Arts Council?

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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At the moment there are none to my knowledge. That is not to say there will not be. I did not expect there to be three in the first place, and I certainly did not expect that we would be back to RTÉ again after everything that happened, but we are. I turn to information that has been compiled and the investigative process under way. I would like to think Members support that immediately on becoming aware of this I asked Professor Niamh Brennan, one of the foremost authorities on corporate governance in Ireland, to carry out an investigation into this matter. I have given fairly wide terms of reference. There will be implications. There is no doubt about that, and I am as anxious as the Deputy to hear who said what when, and to whom. I do know it came late in the day to me, and when it did come, after my appointment, I dealt with it. Who knew what prior to that is something I want to get to the bottom of, which is why I have tasked Professor Brennan and the others on the investigative panel to do that body of work for us.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am glad the Minister raised the issue of Professor Niamh Brennan. This is not a criticism but she carried out a report and review in the culture of governance in RTÉ and she totally missed that this €4 million write-off had been discussed repeatedly by the RTÉ board in 2023, and that there were issues in that project in 2019. Can the Minister in any way assure us in the reviews she is doing that she will not miss other flaws or gaps in the reports from either RTÉ or the Arts Council? This is to ensure that when all of this is finalised, we are assured that the accounts are fully acceptable, but also that any project floundering - as were both IT projects in both organisations from early on - will be scrapped before the expenditure of huge amounts of taxpayers' money.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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There is one important thing to point out here, which is that the Department has no role in the sanctioning of capital expenditure within RTÉ. I know the Deputy knows that. With regard to Professor Niamh Brennan, the Deputy's assessment has been quite unfair. I know him a long time and I know he will reflect on that. The work she did on RTÉ unearthed a serious culture that had failed the organisation, the employees, the licence payers and the Oireachtas, and has ultimately resulted in a situation where we now have a body of work under way in RTÉ that will transform it into a far smaller, slimmer and more efficient organisation that is fit for purpose and in which the public has trust. The person who really drove that, by virtue of the report, was Professor Niamh Brennan. That is why, culturally, I also have to get under the bonnet of the Arts Council because that impairment or loss of money was lurking around for a long time. The Deputy is absolutely right, and the whistle was not blown on it. Once I became aware of it, I dealt with it, and the person in this country who has the greatest level of experience in that area is heading it up for us.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I did not mean to question her at all. I was just saying that she failed to see the hole in the accounts concerning that €4 million for IT.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. I know everybody is anxious to see what we will ultimately get to by way of a report and how quickly. What I do not want to do is put pressure on the group I have assigned to carry out the work for fear people will say I am in any exercising undue influence. I want a report I can stand over and present to the Oireachtas. I am sure it will be debated by committees and the people relevant to the information contained in it will come before them and will be accountable and co-operate with them in full.