Arts Council wastes 7 mil

The Irish Times and the Business Post have named the companies involved. According to the Business Post, 13 companies were involved.

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/02/13/three-companies-that-shared-48m-from-arts-council-for-abandoned-it-project-named/

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/2025/02/13/arts-council-may-need-15m-more-to-replace-grants-system-after-53m-failure/

Regards…jmcc

No idea have you seen the spec. There's very little detail in the report.

The Arts Council would submit the tender or request for tender. The private companies submit a tender response.

I have been part of tender responses. You first try to have the most competitive price to win. After that its all about the professional services people baffling the customer with bullshit and showering them with Change Requests. Public sector managers do seem to be the most clueless and easy to manipulate because it's not their money and they get no reward for delivery. For example, these days you would tell them that they need even more security features and a dollop of AI - it's never refused. More cost…especially when you bring in the security "experts" at 2000 a day. The consultants know that the government is awash with money and they are all making hay.

Even stranger to encounter someone who completely fails to grasp that the role of an Opposition is to hold the government of the day to account. But then again, one does encounter quite a lot of strange people on Boards.ie!

Care to explain why the Opposition spokesperson(s) covering the Arts brief would be asking questions about the Childrens' Hospital, Housing, the bicycle shed, the Security Hut or the mobile phone pouches? Or is it simply that you don't really understand how opposition works?

Asking questions about RTE would be valid, but that scandal had erupted almost a year earlier, so had been flogged to death in the Dáil and the relevant Committees long before the Phoenix article was published.

The sheepish one is convinced that it would have been 'really easy' to do what the AC were asking.

It's only 'really easy' when you haven't actually read the tender or had to go through a competitive process of having your 'really easy' solution being pitched against others. If there was a 'really easy' solution available, why didn't ANY of the large numbers of ICT companies in town, and indeed across the world, come with a proposal to do the 'really easy' solution at a 'really low' cost and win the contract?

BTW, the response to a Request for Tenders is (surprise surprise) a tender.

https://illion.tenderlink.com/blog/what-is-tendering/

RFT: As mentioned, RFT is an abbreviation of Request For Tender. This is the document(s) the Buyer releases, inviting Suppliers to submit their responses. An RFT will typically include documents outlining the following:

Tender: On the other hand, a tender is the document the Supplier submits in response to the RFT – essentially an offer to supply the goods/services the Buyer requires.

The 'really easy' stuff was a response to this post.

I've worked on lots of procurement too, public and private sector. Terminology can vary, but a tender is definitely a tender.

The list of covid payments to musicians was hilarious. All people working for the few connected management companies

The whole point of Arts Council funding is to support relatively unknown artists.

If they were relatively known artists, they wouldn't need or get funding.

Honestly, you seem to have missed the point completely.

It's your claim. Does it stand up?

Their online system was ten years old at the time they decided to replace it. That's about eighty in Internet years.

And then the money from tourism will make many more millions. I think money well spent.