Results 10,821-10,840 of 10,962 for speaker:Patrick O'Donovan

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: I was notified about this on my way home from Áras an Uachtaráin by the Secretary General after receiving my seal of office. Pretty much every day since then has been dominated by this issue within the Department and how we were going to address it, rebuild confidence and show the artists who are receiving the €141 million we are not in any way going to go after them. This...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: One of the first things I wanted to do was engage with the council itself and that is why I met the chair and the former director as soon as possible after being appointed. That is why I brought the accounts to the Government as soon as I could, which had not been done, and that is why I initiated a complete governance and culture deep-dive, for want of a better word, into the Arts Council,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: Is the Arts Council going to be punished for this? The answer is "No". I am not going to go after the moneys that go into the council, but I am going to work with the Department officials and with the Arts Council through the chair to ensure the systems, governance, oversight, management and operation of it are transformed into a fit-for-purpose 2025 entity.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: I became aware of this when I spoke to the Secretary General and the assistant secretary last week. Obviously this matter is under live investigation so I do not think it would be fair or prudent for me to comment on something like that. It probably will wind up with the Data Protection Commissioner.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: I thank the Senator. As she will appreciate, we are at the very early stages of budget 2026 at the moment. As I said to Deputy Ó Snodaigh a while ago my overriding priority here is to get the money element of it sorted and I will deal with the design and implementation of it after that. It would not be appropriate for me to start designing a scheme in an Oireachtas committee in the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: At the risk of repeating myself, I cannot design a scheme I do not have money for. Once I have money I will be able to give firmer indication as to the amount, the number of people, the rates, the eligibility and everything like that, but at the moment I do not have line of sight on a funding line and until I do we will work forward on that basis.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: It is. I am sure the Chairman and all the members, as well the Minister of State and I, would be parochial with regard to this. There is no arts installation, for instance, between Limerick and Tralee. While there are some fabulous national cultural institutions we are investing very heavily in, like the archives, the library, the National Museum and the Crawford in Cork, we have in the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: Yes, and again all that will be resource-dependent and depend on discussion between me and the Minister, Deputy Chambers. Local authorities up to now have been shouldering quite a lot of the burden of the physical infrastructure for the performing, visual and creative arts around the country, whether it is small galleries or small theatre spaces. It is the local authorities that have been...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: Yes, absolutely. At the end of the day - and it is on in Wexford this year, and it was there last year too - local commercial activity, be it restaurants, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts or camp sites, does exceptionally well. Deputy Brennan referred to approximately 600,000 people being in Wexford town. Deputy Malcolm Byrne will know this too. Wexford has seen a boom in the number of people...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: This is extremely important. When I say I do not know whether we have bottomed out, I will not know that until Professor Niamh Brennan's report is finished. I think it would be a bit foolhardy of me to say that everything is as it is now and we have full transparency and all the facts. I thought last week that the legal bill was €60,000-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: -----when it was €119,000. If I were to tell the Senator now that we have bottomed out, and then something else comes up in Professor Brennan's report, would I not then look like an awful eejit?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: Regarding the legal bill, this is exactly what we did. The officials in our Department interrogate those numbers and this is how we arrived at €119,000. That figure came from people who work in my Department going deeper and deeper with questioning to find out what the actual cost was, especially given there could be further liabilities if legal action were to be pursued. That...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: One of the things the Department will have to have regard to is that we will need a temporary acting director, CEO or call it what you will. We are in the process of trying to identify someone to do it. I have to look at this issue in the round, with the consent of the board, then, at a time we will determine after Professor Niamh Brennan reports. Many of the decisions here were taken with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: The main thrust of the discussions I had with the companies was to assess their position on whether they believed that age verification is a good thing. Universally all of them did. The Deputy is right that it is going to be a complicated issue to be able to verify a person's age. There are a number of different ways that can be done-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: My concerns, in a hierarchical ranking, are concern for the child first. That is my primary concern.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: My primary concern at the moment is to make sure that children online are safe. As a parent and as a former teacher, this is my primary motivation. Each and every one of the companies I met has a different methodology or suggestion as to how they believe age verification could be achieved. The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer will have a view, the European Commission will...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: If there is a hierarchy, it is that the safety of the child should come first no matter what else.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: No, I did not. I discussed the safety of the child online. I encourage the committee if members have suggestions to outline how our children could be safe online. It is a balancing act in terms of rights but they have to be proportionate. The most important thing is that the right of the child to be safe online should be enshrined.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport: Update on Departmental Priorities and Legislation: Department of Culture, Communications and Sport (2 Jul 2025)

Patrick O'Donovan: I am open to-----