Cavan-Monaghan TD and Member of the Public Accounts Committee, Cathy Bennett TD, has said that "if senior government officials plead ignorance to the waste in public expenditure then they are admitting gross incompetence."
Representatives of the Arts Council and the Department of Tourism Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport were before the Committee recently arising from a failed IT project which saw €7 million in taxpayer funds yield no workable product.
The Sinn Fein TD says the public will be "all too aware" that cost overruns going into the millions or complete failure regarding government IT projects have unfortunately not been uncommon.
While there were failures within the Arts Council in relation to this project, Deputy Bennett also believes that when a failure is repeated across various unrelated public offices and bodies, it points to a common, systemic failure.
As a result of her concerns, Deputy Bennett will write to the committee requesting to seek all internal communications between the Arts Council and government departments.
Deputy Bennett continued: "In this instance, I am not confident that either the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform adequately responded to what sounds to have effectively been a sounding of the alarm and plea for assistance at the earliest stages from the Arts Council.
"I am deeply concerned that if this lax, hands of approach to safeguarding public money were replicated across other projects it would go a long way towards explaining why projects fail or run grossly over budget."
