Probe still ongoing into former Picture Palace company’s affairs

An investigation is ongoing into the organisation that was set-up to deliver the city’s arthouse cinema.

The Charities Regulator has confirmed that its probe into Solas Galway Picture Palace is still live – more than a year on from when it was launched.

A liquidator was appointed to Solas last June, three months after it was confirmed by the Charities Regulator that it had launched an investigation into its affairs.

In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, a spokesperson for the watchdog said: “The Charities Regulator’s inspection into affairs of the Solas Galway Picture Palace is on-going. When it is complete it is intended to publish the inspectors’ report.”

The Charities Regulator in March 2017 ordered the investigation after an initial examination of its books, documents and other records relating to the controversial building.

The project was raised at the Public Accounts Committee last week by Independent Dáil Deputy Catherine Connolly, who described it as “an example of an utter failure of management”.

“This isn’t a public building, this is a private building; that’s the problem. We can’t think of a more inappropriate name than Solas (meaning light in Irish), in the context of the history of this building. There’s an absence of light really in the way this was handled,” she said.

Deputy Connolly said that when she was a City Councillor, she “struggled to ask questions” in relation to the cinema because Ireland is a small country and Galway a small city and “very often there is not a reward for asking questions”.

Noting that asking questions when public money is concerned was “extremely important”, Deputy Connolly added: “In relation to the arts, there’s a certain element that one is a philistine if one questions it. So let me just get that out of the way, as somebody who has promoted the arts at all levels in my different roles.”

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) late last year concluded that the cinema would be delivered nine years late and €2.1 million over-budget.

It was first proposed in 2006, and it was then envisaged that work would start in 2007 and be completed in two years. It only opened last month.

“The amount of public funds committed to the project increased by €2.1 million from the initial expected outlay of €6.3 million. The project has relied substantially on public investment to complete the development and to fund the increased project costs,” the C&AG said.

Vast amounts of funds from the public purse were poured into the project including millions from the Department of Arts, Galway City Council, the Irish Film Board, as well as Cultural; Cinema Consortium and Western Development Commission.

Element Pictures, which operates the Light House in Dublin, took over the running of the cinema from Solas Galway Picture Palace, on a 30-year lease, having invested around €800,000.

At the PAC last week, Katherine Licken, Secretary General of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, accepted the C&AG’s recommendations that the department should review its approach to all projects where the key risks were carried by the State.

She accepted mistakes were made and that the project could have been managed better but she denied Deputy Connolly’s assertion that “there was absolutely no supervision of this project”.

Ms Licken said: “I wouldn’t say there was a total absence of supervision; we did intervene at very critical moments. When Solas went out to contract without consulting with the Department, we actually refused to make any more payments to them until they came back with a business plan that brought in private sector funding, which they subsequently did.

“The Irish Film Board offered a project manager to Solas, they didn’t take up that offer. We did consider everything, including stopping the project, we worked very close with Galway City Council, and I do acknowledge the work of the Council, and we agreed the City Council would take over project management.”