Arts Council
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Patrick O'Donovan (FG), Limerick County

I think Deputy Ó Snodaigh would agree with me that the Arts Council has gone through a fairly tumultuous period of change in the recent past, and I acknowledge the role that Dr. Moling Ryan has played as an interim director. I have no plans in the immediate future to do any further chopping and changing. I want to leave things bed down and get a genuine schedule and timetable for the change management that is now required to go through. There will also be legislative requirements and Professor Niamh Brennan referred to this also. Deputy Ó Snodaigh and I have discussed possible changes to the existing Arts Act. There will obviously be consultation and engagement with the committee that we will have to do. I do not want to see any other major change. There is a sufficient amount there.
On whether the Arts Council will get a new IT system, there is a board and executive and it may be that they may feel it is worthy to come back to the Department and revisit this whole thing from the start. There was a suggestion of an off-the-shelf version that could be acquired. I will consider anything but at the moment the most important thing is that the report is there, the recommendations need to be implemented, there is a schedule of timeframes before the implementation, there is engagement with the committee and there is the Arts Council getting back to the daily business of what it is best at.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20