This story was first published on 14/01/2007
By: MICHAEL O’ FARRELL
Investigative Correspondent
A FORMAL inquiry into a potentially serious conflict of interest in his department has been ordered by Arts Minister John O’Donoghue in response to issues raised by the Irish Mail on Sunday.
Mr O’Donoghue ordered the probe after this newspaper revealed that the department’s most senior arts official is romantically involved with a former Government consultant.
As assistant secretary general of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, Niall ” Donnchú is the country’s top arts administrator, answerable only to secretary general Philip Furlong and to Mr O’Donoghue himself.
He was appointed to the post in the summer of 20005.
After public-interest concerns were raised by senior public figures, the MoS has established that Mr ” Donnchú is romantically linked to an American literary consultant named Laura Barnes.
Miss Barnes, 40, from Cleveland, Ohio, was appointed as interim director of Dublin’s James Joyce Centre last June.
A renowned rare-book dealer, she made a fortune from the trade before taking up a string of positions as a literary consultant to the Government, beginning in 2003.
Concerns of a possible conflict of interest first arose on December 12 when Miss Barnes made an early morning phone call to Westmeath Fine Gael TD Paul McGrath.
He claims she threatened him with legal action. The extraordinary call was sparked by a series of five D·il questions tabled by Mr McGrath in which he asked about the National Library’s purchase of a rare Joyce manuscript in June 2005. The controversial deal saw the Government pay E1.17m for the set of documents just months after Miss Barnes bought them from a Paris dealer for E400,000.
However, during the call, Mr McGrath became concerned that Miss Barnes displayed a remarkable in-depth knowledge of questions that had not yet been published in the D·il’s order paper.
He has since written a formal letter of complaint to the Oireachtas Committee on Procedure and Privilege. He is also in the process of asking the Standards in Public Office Commission and the Government spending watchdog, the comptroller and auditor general (C&AG), to review the matter.
When approached in person by the MoS this week, Mr ” Donnchú did not answer when asked if he had tipped off his partner about the questions.
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ he said. Miss Barnes, who was with Mr ” Donnchú at the time, also declined to answer when asked who had informed her of the questions.
Neither Mr ” Donnchú nor Miss Barnes responded to detailed written questions delivered to them by hand.
Those questions asked Mr ” Donnchú whether he had ever declared his relationship as a possible conflict of interest.
After his appointment to the department in 2005, Mr ” Donnchú served as deputy chair of a State committee charged with organising the Samuel Beckett centenary celebrations between November 2005 and May 2006.
Miss Barnes was also on the committee and was paid E105,674 in fees, staff costs and expenses for co-ordinating the festival.
A month after the committee was discharged, she was appointed interim director of the struggling James Joyce Centre in Dublin’s North Great George’s Street.
In Departmental correspondence between Mr ” Donnchú and other officials, Miss Barnes is the only person mentioned as a candidate for the role of director – by Chris Flynn, of the Department’s cultural institutions special projects unit.
Responding to concerns raised, a spokesman for Mr O’Donoghue said an inquiry had been ordered.
‘The minister has asked the secretary general to formally inquire into the circumstances surrounding the issues raised,’ the spokesman said.
Speaking this weekend, Mr McGrath said his initial concern had always been about value for taxpayers’ money in the purchase of the Joyce manuscript.
‘Based on her response to the parliamentary questions and the most recent revelations, I have decided to refer all of this to the C&AG for his review.
Too close for comfort
Hand in hand, blonde book dealer in Dail questions row and the civil servant who holds the arts purse strings
First published in the Irish Mail on Sunday on 14/01/2007
By: MICHAEL O’FARRELL
Investigative Correspondent
HAND IN hand, they amble through the cobblestoned grounds of Trinity College with the easy familiarity of a couple.
Occasionally, he leans down towards her and they kiss romantically.
Walking slowly, arm in arm, they exit the university onto Nassau Street, sometimes pausing briefly to window shop.
The pair are not unlike the many other couples enjoying the last of the festive season with a January stroll through the city after work.
However, their relationship has become the focus of concerns about a possible conflict of interest in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.
Some of those concerns are now being raised with the Oireacht as Committee on Procedure and Privilege, the Standards in Public Office Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General.
And, in response to revelations by the Irish Mail On Sunday, Arts Minister John O’Donoghue has ordered an inquiry.
Tall and distinctive- looking, with tightly cropped red hair, Niall O’Donnchu is the department’s Assistant Secretary General, responsible for the arts. He was appointed to the post in summer 2005.
As the country’s most senior arts official, he is answerable only to Secretary General Philip Furlong and Minister O’Donoghue.
Petite and blonde, the 40-year- old American who accompanied him on that post-Christmas city centre stroll is a wealthy rare book dealer and former government consultant.
In the past three years she has earned more than E280,000 in fees, staff costs and expenses for her government consultancy work.
Last June, she was appointed as the interim director of Dublin’s James Joyce Centre in North Great George’s Street.
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Miss Barnes is a Joyce enthusiast and mother of two young boys.
Twice married, first to Michael Gene Barnes and then to Damien Weldon, she has recently used both surnames as well as her birth name, Rosenfeld.
A renowned rare book dealer, she has accumulated Joyce material worth well in excess of half a million dollars.
From a wealthy background, she forged a successful career with some of New York’s best rare book dealers and later founded her own company, Araby Books, before being appointed to a string of consultancy positions by the Irish Government, beginning in 2003.
Newspapers and politicians would have had no interest in the relationship between Mr O’Donnchu and Miss Barnes were it not for a remarkable call she made to the mobile phone of Westmeath TD Paul McGrath early on the morning of Tuesday, December 12th.
When the call came, at 9.20am, Mr McGrath could not believe what he was hearing.
Astounded, he listened as Miss Barnes threatened him with legal action.
The reason for her outburst was the fact that Mr McGrath had submitted a series of five written Parliamentary Questions (PQs).
Some of the questions referred to the National Library’s controversial E1.17m purchase of a rare James Joyce manuscript from Miss Barnes in June 2005, months after she paid just E400,000 for the documents.
Another question asked for a breakdown of how much she had earned for government consultancy work carried out during literary festivals in recent years.
In a D·il career spanning almost two decades, Mr McGrath had never before been contacted by anyone referred to in a PQ, let alone been threatened with legal action.
He was dumbfounded. And, as he tried to come to terms with what he was hearing, he realised that the questions he had asked had not yet been formally published in the D·il’s order paper.
In addition one question, about the procedure for the appointment of Miss Barnes as interim director of the Joyce Centre, had been ruled out of order and never appeared on the order paper at all.
Miss Barnes had to have internal departmental information. Someone had to have told her about the questions and their content before they were officially published.
Could that person have been Mr O’Donnchu? If so, he isn’t saying. Neither is she.
In her only public comment on the issue, Miss Barnes has told the Irish Times that she had been contacted by someone in the department to confirm details for answers being prepared. She has never specified who.
According to Miss Barnes, she c o n t a c t e d Mr McGrath because she was upset that somebody had been asking personal questions about her.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done – but I figured I should stand up for myself,’
she said.
Miss Barnes also said she had been contacted by the department to confirm details in the responses officials were preparing f o r Mr McGrath. ‘ He wanted to know everything about me, short of what I had for breakfast.
‘If you want to answer any question entirely truthfully, accurately and completely, you make sure your facts are right,’ she said.
Earlier this week, through solicitors, Miss Barnes denied threatening Mr McGrath.
However, Mr McGrath told the MoS that it was unprecedented in his experience for a third party to be given such detailed knowledge of PQs, especially since none of them seemed to require information that was not already available in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and the National Library.
He has since officially complained in a strongly-worded letter to Rory O’Hanlon, the D·il’s Ceann Comhairle and chairman of the powerful Oireachtas Committee on Procedure and Privilege.
‘I was totally shocked by the receipt of this phone call,’ he wrote. ‘I believe it was an attempt to intimidate me.
‘In my 17 years in the D·il, I have asked thousands of questions, many about third parties, and this is the first occasion I have been contacted by a third party like this,’ the letter of complaint reads.
Mr McGrath is also asking the Government’s spending watchdog, Comptroller and Auditor John Purcell, and the Standards in Public Office Commission to investigate.
When approached in person by the MoS, Miss Barnes did not respond when asked who had told her about the PQs.
Accompanying her, Mr O’Donnchu a l s o did not respond when asked whether he had informed Miss Barnes of the PQs.
Written questions delivered by hand to Mr O’Donnchu and Miss Barnes eight days ago also failed to elicit any response.
However, reacting to the issues raised in today’s MoS, Minister O’Donoghue has already asked his department’s secretary general to inquire into the possibility of a conflict of interest.
‘The minister has asked the secretary general to formally inquire into the circumstances surrounding the issues raised,’ a spokesman said.
A successful career civil servant, Mr O’Donnchu has been in contact with Miss Barnes professionally since his appointment as assistant secretary general.
However, the Government’s controversial e1.17m acquisition of Joyce material from Miss Barnes in June 2005 predates his time in the department.
So, too, does the department’s decision to appoint Miss Barnes as co-ordinator of the ReJoyce Festival in 2003, a position for which she was paid E175,621 in ‘fees and expenses to cover staffing and employee costs.’
From November 2005 until May 2006, Miss Barnes was appointed to a State committee charged with organising the Samuel Beckett centenary festival.
As programme manager for the festival she would have been answerable in part to the deputy chairman of that committee, Mr O’Donnchu.
For her role in co-ordinating the festival, Miss Barnes was paid e105,674 in fees, staff costs and expenses.
Just a month after the Beckett Committee concluded its work, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern reopened the struggling James Joyce Centre with a Government commitment of E250,000 and Miss Barnes was installed as interim director.
In debt and facing recommendations that it be relocated to the Dublin Writers Museum in Parnell Square, the James Joyce Centre was only saved after Mr Ahern intervened.
Making it clear that he did not favour the closure of the facility in his constituency, Mr Ahern’s aides asked the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism to come up with a solution.
One of those to come up with the required solution would be Mr O’Donnchu. And the interim director subsequently hired to see the centre through its crisis was Miss Barnes.
Mr O’Donnchu declined to respond to questions about any role he may have played in the decision to appoint Miss Barnes.
However, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that he was deeply involved with the reopening of the Joyce Centre.
Indeed, in a series of internal memos between Mr O’Donnchu and other departmental officials, Miss Barnes was the only name mentioned as a possible candidate for the role of director.
In a departmental memo dated September 24, 2005, Mr Donnchu urged that ‘an agreed professional manager be installed’ in the James Joyce Centre for an 18-month period.
It is impossible to establish where the suggestion came from but, just three days later, the candidate had been found.
Another memo, from Chris Flynn, the principal of the department’s Cultural Institutions Special Projects Unit, named Miss Barnes as an ideal candidate.
‘For this role as interim director, the individual required should be a Joyce specialist with the skills of good organisation and persuasion, a person who would be seen as a neutral with no axe to grind.
Someone like Laura Barnes would be ideal.’ The memo goes on to say that it would be possible for the department to directly employ the interim director if necessary.
On September 30, Mr Donnchu wrote to Minister O’Donoghue saying that the funding boost and an 18-month period of grace would give the Joyce centre ‘a fighting chance – under a new board, new management, and a new business plan – to prove that it can survive at the present location.’ The matter was later put before the Taoiseach, on October 5, at a Programme for Government review meeting, and the fate of the Joyce Centre was assured.
The next meeting involving the Joyce Centre and its director will soon set in motion another set of departmental memos.
The names Niall O’Donnchu and Laura Barnes will once more be prominent.
Only, this time, it will be for very different reasons.
ADDITIONAL STORIES RELATED TO THIS TOPIC CAN BE DOWNLOADED BY CLICKING THE LINKS BELOW:
Laura Barnes and the Joyce Papers 1
Laura Barnes and the Joyce Papers 2
Laura Barnes and the Joyce Papers 3
Laura Barnes and the Joyce Papers 4
