MARIE O’HALLORAN

Limerick’s spending as a city of culture will be examined by the Comptroller & Auditor General and the Department of Public Expenditure to ensure “everything will be done in the correct manner”, the Minister for Arts has said.

Jimmy Deenihan told the Dáil a service level agreement was being completed with Limerick city council to ensure it would be subject to State scrutiny. He also reiterated the issue of appointments was a matter for the council, following the controversy about the appointment of the city of culture chief executive, who subsequently resigned, after the earlier resignations of the artistic director and two other senior personnel.

Confidence
Mr Deenihan told Sinn Féin arts spokeswoman Sandra McLellan he had confidence in the success of the year and hailed its "great start", despite "difficulties and challenges".

He said such challenges were "not new to the city of culture programme and the same problems existed in Derry, Liverpool and Cork".

Ms McLellan said the Minister should “show leadership”, but Mr Deenihan said it was “up to the city council to decide on all personnel issues, and the artistic director to decide on programming issues”.

He added: “From the beginning I had no involvement and our department manages the funding and ensures everything is done in a proper fashion”.

Mr Deenihan had earlier said plans to repeat the city of culture project every two years could not proceed because of funding constraints and the next city of culture would not take place until 2018.

Independent TD for Waterford John Halligan, who appealed to the Minister to consider his city for 2018, questioned the funding decisions of the Arts Council.

He said that over the past five years “there has been a nationwide cull of funding to regional theatre companies”, and there was a perception they were being “sacrificed for the five mainly Dublin-based companies”.

The Minister said, however, that the Arts Council made the decisions on who got funding.