The Irish taxpayer is still paying for Galway 2020, three years after the ill-fated event largely failed to take place.
At Monday night’s meeting of Galway City Council, it was revealed that an additional €1 million of State money will be allocated this year to fund Galway’s controversial time as the European Capital of Culture.
This is in addition to €21.8 million that has already been drawn down by the project, including €14 million in funding from the exchequer, €3.7 million from Galway City Council, €2.6 million from Galway County Council and an award of €1.5 million from the European Union.
Galway 2020 was hit with a series of major challenges with the Covid-19 pandemic severely curtailing the number of events that could take place.
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The project team and board of management also saw several high-profile resignations, including chairwoman Aideen McGinley and chief executive Hannah Kiely, while two other staff members also took cases to the Workplace Relations Commission.
Speaking at the council meeting, Galway City Council chief executive Brendan McGrath, a board member of Galway 2020, declined to give details of any settlements made between Galway 2020 and staff members who resigned because of a confidentiality clause in the contract of a former staff member.
[ Galway Capital of Culture: first the euphoria, now the questionsOpens in new window ]
Mr McGrath, who will retire from his position with the council later this year, said that any severance payments made were not a “huge amount of money” and far less than what has been reported locally.
“I have no intention of spending my retirement in the High Court being sued for breaching a legally binding agreement,” he said. “To portray this [severance] as a huge amount of money would be wrong. But I do understand people’s interest in knowing.”
A number of councillors raised concerns about the level of transparency surrounding how Galway 2020 allocated funds to private contractors and arts organisations.
Cllr Eddie Hoare of Fine Gael, questioned the “control mechanisms” used to allocate funding and said that the cancellations prompted by Covid-19 might actually have “saved” Galway 2020, because of the many challenges faced by the organisation before the pandemic hit.
“I’d like to question the control mechanisms which were in place governing how funds were drawn down by organisations. A lot of organisations got a lot of money out of this. There is still a lot of expenditure going out through Galway 2020,” he said.
“This event was a massive disappointment. The overwhelming view of the public is that it didn’t achieve what was expected. Galway 2020 was met with a lot of difficulties in advance of Covid. In a way, I think Covid might actually have saved Galway 2020.”
Mr McGrath said that he would strongly rebut the suggestion that anyone involved in Galway 2020 is “hiding anything”.
“I think it beholds all of us to be careful in the language that we use about this,” he said.
“Every single document that the company [behind Galway 2020] has produced has been published.
“There were definitely challenges and issues and there were things that Galway City of Culture did not do very well. There were some issues on the staffing side, but not to the degree that people believe.
“If we got one thing wrong, and badly wrong, it was that we got our communication wrong. We didn’t robustly explain things as they happened. That is one big learning [experience] for us.”
More than 50 separate reports about Galway 2020 were presented to councillors ahead of the meeting.
Fianna Fáil councillor Alan Cheevers said he was “bamboozled” by the amount of information provided.
In a heated contribution to the debate, Cllr Neil McNelis of the Labour Party said the local authority should now move on from Galway 2020 and stop “flogging a dead horse”.
“The paperwork which was circulated lays out point blank what happened. It’s all there in black and white and nothing is hidden. What are we doing here but flogging a dead horse? There is enough information there for someone to go and write a PhD if they wanted to. If people want more information, they can take out a FOI (Freedom of Information),” he said.
“At the end of the day, all I want to know is three things: was everybody paid, is anybody hiding anything and did we get all the money that we were promised?”
