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60 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 61
McLaughlin remains a continuing consulting
favourite for funding by the Arts Council of
which he was once a senior employee
T
emple Bar Properties converted
Temple Bar into a high-rent drink-
driven cultural centre in the 1990s.
Its focus then moved from physical
regeneration to consolidating the
cultural oering it was housing and, in 2006, it
became Temple Bar Cultural Trust (TBCT), with
a new board appointed by Dublin City Council.
It was a private and limited not-for-profit
company engaged in cultural development in
Temple Bar, organising Temple Bar Food
Market,concerts,circus, street, Culture Night
and Handel’s Day. In 2005 it had an income of
€2m, with €1.6m of this coming from its
50-strong property portfolio estimated to be
worth at least €100m. Its CEO was Dermot
McLaughlin, a 17-year Arts Council employee
who had risen to become its assistant director.
He was also a talented fiddler.
Governance of TBCT was dysfunctional and in
2011 a review by Latitude, a consultancy,
recommended it be wound up and subsumed
into the Council.
Independent City Councillor Mannix Flynn, a
board member of TBCT, tabled a successful
motion to that eect. The then city manager
John Tierney agreed to commission a review of
the organisation focusing on corporate
governance standards, board representation
and whether the trust was fulfilling its brief as a
cultural promoter and enabler.
However, a Council audit report published in
March 2013 levelled charges of a dierent level
of seriousness against TBCT, including failures
of corporate governance and “control
weaknesses and/or regulatory violations [that]
represent unacceptable exposure and risk” for
the company.
The report found that the trust’s board
minutes and papers were “not available” in
relation to certain financial transactions, noting
that TBCT’s business plan for 2010 and 2011
had not been approved by its board.
From the
Temple of
Bars to
Listowel
Writers
Week
Dermot McLaughlin mismanaged Temple Bar and, facilitated by the
uncontrolled Arts Council which never took responsibility for failures in
Temple Bar, is now arrogantly calling out mismanagement in Listowel
By Michael Smith
There were found to be no appropriate
financial procedures and the fact the same
external auditors had been acting for over 10
years was deemed “in contravention of good
corporate governance”. The party at most risk
from these failures was the publicly-funded Arts
Council which funds most of the cultural activity
in Temple Bar, not exactly an oasis of private
culture, to the tune of €9m in 2022. The Arts
Council notably failed to investigate whether
certain sums paid by it to institutions in Temple
Bar were forwarded as intended to TBCT.
A TBCT-commissioned review of the audit by
former IBEC chief Turlough O’Sullivan found that
the McLaughlin-fed board had “failed in its duty
of oversight and governance by not enquiring
into and satisfying itself that proper procedures
were in place around financial transactions”.
O’Sullivan was no subversive so it was telling
that even he found this level of delinquency.
Lively utumn gles cn turn to sudden winter shower
nd you could do with n expensive umbrell
CULTURE
60 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 61
McLaughlin resigned, agreeing not to pursue
actions for defamation, and obtaining a
substantial severance package after a
disciplinary hearing into his role in oering
generous redundancy packages to four senior
sta members was cancelled.
So what’s happened to the man who presided
over the mess? Funny thing is McLaughlin
doesn’t now mention his period in the van in
Dublin’s Cultural Quarter. He remains a
continuing consulting favourite for funding by
his former employer, in the absence of a clear
Arts Council policy on how it procures its
consultants.
According to now free agent Dermot
McLaughlin he’s “been involved in voluntary
work with organisations and on boards for many
years. I enjoy being involved, I’m always
interested in finding ways to help, and I love
learning new things. So for me, voluntary work
in enriching and valuable”.
His voluntary work which came largely to an
end after 2008 included spells as:Chairman
(2011-2018) of Irish Traditional Music Archive;
Chairman (current) of TG4 Gradam Ceoil
selection panel (annual national traditional
music awards); Chairman (2007-2011) of Dublin
Dance Festival;
Chairman (2007) of Údarás na Gaeltachta and
Arts Council National Monitoring Committee on
Gaeltacht arts; Board Member (2006-2008):
Irish Architecture Foundation
Beyond this strings to McLaughlin’s bow
include that he was:
Board Member (2003-2005): Rough Magic
Theatre Company; Founder and Board Member
(1994 to date): Scoil Cheoil Frankie Kennedy;
Founder and Committee Member (1982 to date):
Cairdeas na bhFidléirí .
In 2014 he set up his own independent
consultancy practice, Creative Strategic
Solutions.
After that he was he was involved in the Arts
Council of Northern Ireland’s Audit of Traditional
Music in Northern Ireland (2014-15); the Arts
Council’s review of contemporary music policy
initiative (2015) Ealaín na Gaeltachta’s
Competitive assessment of funding proposals
(2015); and An Cosán Glas’s Business planning,
negotiation strategy (2015).
It’s amazing how far an unassailable
relationship with the Arts Council can take a
man.
He also claims (admits?) he was involved in
the “Meeting House Square €2.2m capital
redevelopment, business planning and
marketing project (2010)”. Sounds good, so let’s
have a look at what the project architect says
about this. Seán Harrington architects’ website
is as sanguine as McLaughlin is about the
situation. “There is a saying in Ireland that you
can have four seasons in one day. Warm spring
sunshine can lead to intense summer light.
Lively autumn gales can turn to a sudden wintry
shower because Irish skies are constantly
changing. Seán Harrington architects was
commissioned to find a solution. The innovative
solution provides a convertible umbrella
covering over a popular public square in Dublin
Temple Bar area. The landmark umbrella
projects bespoke design comprises of four 21-m
high steel structural masts”.
This is shameless and shocking when you
realise the, admittedly attractive, umbrellas
don’t work, never really did. In the last few
weeks one of the brolly arms buckled and repair
costs are so prohibitive as to make its
reinstatement unlikely.
The audit commissioned by Dublin City
Council was particularly scathing about Temple
Bar Square: “Board minutes were altered,
deleting concerns raised by some Councillors,
and provided to Ulster Bank to support a loan;
Reams of financial data relating to the project
were deleted from the trust’s computer system;
A total of €2.7m of taxpayers’ money was spent
on the project - despite just €2m being
budgeted.
There was no competitive procurement
process before the architects’ appointment”
though the EU requires one for expenditure over
€25,000.
The audit concluded that the number and the
extent of weaknesses uncovered represents
“unacceptable exposure and risk”.
There was trouble too when it emerged part
of Harrington’s payment was to be his exclusive
use of the umbrellaed square for a series of ten
of his own events, worth €35,000.
Harrington continues to avail of goodwill from
Dublin City Council. His considerable talents
have found recent form in schemes at York St
whose roof gardens are unusable, lifts don’t
Writers Week committee 1983. Amteurs nd the Arts Council won’t hve liked the wllpper
62 July-August 2023 July-August 2023 PB
McLaughlin found that a
“toxic culture and sense
of entitlement” existed
within the committee of
Writers Week though he did
not really instance where
and when, despite dark
talk of “not implementing
[unspecified] policies”
work and where there are flooding issues, as
well as at Denzille Place, Holles St and the Rosie
Hackett Bridge, among other schemes.
Dermot McLaughlin remains in good standing
with the Arts Council from which he receives
work. It is not clear if all of it is put out to tender
first. A recent project, funded by the Arts
Council, was to look into the Listowel Writers
Week Festival in County Kerry which was
founded in 1971 and claims to be Ireland’s
oldest literary festival.
Last year he compiled a report making eight
recommendations for the future development of
the festival, including the disbanding of the
30-member committee, upgrading of the board,
binning of the festival’s chairperson, and the
hiring of a “curator”, to help plan the festival.
Stephen Connolly was appointed to the role.
There’s no messing around with Dermot
McLaughlin. His report is full of sweeping
imperatives: “I stress the urgency of timely
implementation in full of all the
recommendations”. He’s clearly attuned with
the Arts Council’s evolved impatience reflected
in their reduction of funding in the years running
up to the report, with funding in 2022 at
€60,000: “The ‘do nothing’ option of
maintaining the status quo…poses significant
risk to the prospect of the Company being able
to secure or maintain adequate and stable
funding from private sources to sustain its
operations”.
McLaughlin found that a “toxic culture and
sense of entitlement” existed within the
committee of Writers’ Week though he did not
really instance where and when, despite dark
talk of “not implementing [unspecified]
policies”. With his background on TBCT, you
would expect him to know. It seems the tradition
of amateurism, instigated by co-founder John B
Keane, is no longer tolerable to the Arts Council
(Interestingly, fellow co-founder Bryan
McMahon went on to chair the Abbey Theatre in
Dublin with Arts Council support). But it has not
pointed to any downside and there is a loss of
community, zeal, conviviality and abandon
every time the arts administrators win.
Not surprisingly the subverted committee of
the festival expressed no confidence in the
board which had commissioned the committee’s
demise.
Its statement claims that the Board of
Directors had not given a sucient explanation
of the reasons for abolition and asserted that
the committee didn’t recognise the festival as
described in the report, and that the use of
words such as “toxic” were horrifying to its
members.
It all prompted the resignation of the Festival’s
President, Colm Tóibín who described the
committee as representing “best practice”.
Colm McCann, Roddy Doyle, Clare Keegan and
Edna O’Brien wrote an open letter of support,
highlighting the need for passion. The
disbanded committee was invited to sell tickets
and place chairs but was too insulted to
re-engage.
Fianna Fáil Senator Ned O’Sullivan, who in
2007 made 16 of the calls from Leinster House
that enabled Michael Healy Rae’s victory in
Celebrities Go Wild, at a cost of €2600 to the
Oireachtas, appealed to the board to turn back
from its decision describing it as cultural
vandalism. He oered the unlikely view that the
Arts Council funded report, compiled by an ex
Arts Council employee did not represent the Arts
Council’s view on the board, and claimed it had
confirmed that to him.
But it won’t and the 2023 Writers Week
festival in June, with funding down and adverse
publicity, was under-publicised, under-attended
and just a little joyless.
but nobody covered it
