Councillors to ask C&AG for full audit of Galway 2020 finances
From this week's Galway City Tribune - A formal request is to be made to the Comptroller and Auditor General to carry out a full examination of the finances of Galway 2020, the company responsible for organising Galway’s tenure as European Capital of Culture.
The city’s five Fianna Fáil councillors are also calling for the troubled organisation to be wound down, with new, more direct structures being established to ensure that organisations such as the Arts Festival, Macnas or Baboró who have projects outstanding, will be able to bring them to fruition.
This follows Tuesday’s announcement by the Galway 2020 company that it was temporarily laying off most of its staff. It has also terminated its contract with UK based creative company Artichoke and will be “significantly reducing its cultural programme due to the Covid-19 crisis”.
Nineteen of its “30 core staff” are being laid off for three weeks, and the Galway City Tribune understands that most of those are cultural producers and production employees.
Galway 2020, which had already been plagued with financial and organisational difficulties, issued a statement on Tuesday: “We are implementing a three-week temporary layoff programme for all but a skeleton staff, effective from today (Tuesday). We have also made the very difficult decision to bring to an end our contract with Artichoke.”
However, Cllr Crowe says the organisation was already not fit for purpose.
“Covid-19 might be the stated public reason why this is thing is going to finish up, but it isn’t the cause of it being in the trouble it’s in.” This is a preview snippet of this article . Please remember that without advertising revenue and people buying or subscribing to our newspapers, this website, and our Facebook and Twitter pages would not exist. You can buy a digital edition of the Galway City Tribune HERE.