By Valerie Hanley and Michael O’Farrell
TODAY the Irish Mail on Sunday reveals the story the Arts Council doesn’t want you to know – how a top executive helped award a valuable grant to his own mother.
The five files that Arts Council bosses fought hard to keep secret show the pivotal role the council’s head of traditional arts, Paul Flynn (pictured right), played in awarding a grant to his mother, Patricia Flynn. The €16,500 grant to Mrs Flynn – a renowned ballad singer – was to be used to compile a digital archive of traditional songs from south Armagh.
Mr Flynn’s role is revealed in five emails and memos that Arts Council director Orlaith McBride and chairperson Sheila Pratschke initially refused to release after a Freedom of Information request from the MoS.
Those files were only released after a 13-month battle involving the Arts Council’s top two officials, when the Information Commissioner ruled that the Arts Council had ‘not justified its refusal of access’ to the documents. The files the Arts Council did not want you to see reveal that:
- Mr Flynn’s login was used to alter the artistic assessment of his mother’s application before it was included in a final shortlist of applications.
- This apparent alteration by Mr Flynn was deemed by investigators to ‘go beyond conflict of interest’ and formed part of disciplinary proceedings against him.
- Investigators found there was ‘no record to state’ that Mr Flynn ‘absented himself from the meetings’ during which the grant to his mother was decided.
- Mr Flynn authorised the drawdown request on his mother’s grant and passed it to the Arts Council’s finance team for payment.
All of these details were kept from public view when the MoS first requested records under the FOI Act in July 2014. They are contained in a series of files that the Arts Council either withheld or redacted to the point of rendering them meaningless.
At times the council supplied entire pages of completely blacked-out text or entirely blank pages. A second FOI request – asking for access to all records created as the Arts Council deliberated our original request – revealed that director Ms McBride had intervened at the last moment to ensure she controlled which records were released. ‘Given the sensitivity of this… nothing is to be released without my first reviewing,’ she instructed the FOI officer in an email dated two weeks after our request was submitted.
Two weeks after that, after meetings about our request, Ms McBride intervened to remove the person originally allocated to decide what records could be released. ‘I will take responsibility as decision maker on this case,’ she wrote. When the MoS asked for an internal review of Ms McBride’s decisions, it was carried out by chairperson Sheila Pratschke – who had promised more transparency at the Arts Council when she was appointed to her position in January 2014.
Although the review resulted in some minor additions to the information released, Ms Pratschke decided the crucial series of files in question should remain largely confidential.
The decisions of Ms McBride and Ms Pratschke were finally overruled in August this year after the MoS appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner. In her ruling, Elizabeth Dolan, a senior investigator for the Information Commissioner, found that ‘the public interest favoured the release of the information’. She also found that the Arts Council ‘had not justified’ its refusal of one important record nor that its position that the unredacted release of other crucial records would ’cause harm’.
FOI records which the Arts Council did release from the beginning confirm that Paul Flynn declared a conflict of interest on June 14, 2013. ‘As discussed, I declare a conflict of interest regarding the following Deis [grant scheme] applicant… Patricia Flynn,’ his email reads.
This declaration – in the form of an email to an Arts Council administrative executive – was sent a week after his mother’s application was received. But in the absence of the records initially withheld by the Arts Council, there was no way of knowing that a week later Mr Flynn’s login was used to alter the details of his mother’s application file – or that he had later authorised the drawdown request for his mother’s grant and passed it on for payment. It remains unclear how Mr Flynn’s declaration was dealt with and whether his relationship with Patricia Flynn was known to Arts Council superiors.
This is evident from the documents initially withheld by the Arts Council until the Information Commissioner ordered their release. The withheld files show that no concern appears to have been expressed about Patricia Flynn’s grant until five months after her son’s declaration of a conflict of interest. At that point – on Friday, November 29, 2013 – a senior executive is told about the matter and decides to investigate when back in work on Monday.
The files show that two weeks into this informal investigation there was uncertainty as to what records existed that might show he was a son of Patricia Flynn.
‘Paul declared the conflict to Dominica Sandys [arts council executive] on 14 June 2013 but it doesn’t specify the nature of the conflict,’ wrote Arts Council company secretary Martin O’Sullivan on December 13, 2013. ‘Can we confirm from Arts Council records, HR or any other records if there is a family relationship between Paul and the applicant and if so the nature of that relationship?’
During the investigation, payment of the grant to Patricia Flynn was withheld and finally revoked in March 2014 when the Arts Council concluded its probe. The review resulted in the Arts Council updating its conflict of interest protocols. Mr Flynn’s position as head of traditional arts has not been affected. Disciplinary proceedings were conducted and, according to Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan, ‘appropriate action was taken… in line with employment legislation.’ Just what this ‘appropriate action’ amounts to is unknown.
The MoS asked Arts Council director Ms McBride if she would like to explain her decision to take control of the original FOI and her decisions in relation to the documents. She did not respond. The MoS also asked whether any sanction had been applied to Mr Flynn. It was told that ‘the outcomes of an internal disciplinary investigation are confidential’.
In a statement the council’s director of corporate affairs, Seán MacCarthaigh said: ‘The Arts Council now considers this matter closed.’
