Galway’s two local authority chiefs discussed ‘pulling out’ of running the city’s European Capital of Culture 2020 programme because they can’t afford it.
Brendan McGrath, Chief Executive of Galway City Council, described pulling out as a “doomsday scenario”, as he made the suggestion to Kevin Kelly, Chief Executive of Galway County Council.
The Culture Capital programme is a joint initiative of both Councils but is being led by the city.
However, Mr McGrath suggested they might have to reduce the local authority involvement or “pull out altogether” due to budget fears.
He warned the Councils weren’t going to meet the 2017 targets they’d set-out in the bid book that won the designation, which would have negative implications for pilot projects and partnerships.
The explosive email exchange was released to the Connacht Tribune following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
“I think we need to definitively agree if we can collectively meet the budgetary challenge to run ECOC 2020 (European Capital of Culture),” Mr McGrath said in an email to Mr Kelly.
He added: “If we have any concerns in this regard, notwithstanding the implications, we would be better making an early call to this effect and notifying the Department and the EU to let them make alternative arrangements, if they chose to.
“I know this is the doomsday scenario but if we have any doubt at all, the sooner the better we grasp the nettle. It would, in my opinion be better, however undesirable, to pull out early rather than to try produce something that would not reflect well on either authority.
“Other options might be to let a body such as the university (NUIG) lead out as annunciated by their president at the recent final meeting of the steering group.
“If we have to reduce our LA (local authority) involvement or to pull out altogether, we should explore all other options soon before coming to such a conclusion. However, we need early clarity in principle on where we think we are going in the next week or two,” Mr McGrath told Mr Kelly.
The email was dated last October, and was sent as both Councils were preparing budgets for 2017.
Mr McGrath warned that the 2017 budget position will mean “telescoping three years of preparation into two years”.
“This is a retrograde step . . . but though necessary it is highly undesirable. It will also mean having to make significant and additional catch-up budgetary provision in 2018 to make up for lost ground,” he warned.
Mr McGrath said the City Council like the County Council was “struggling with balancing its budget for 2017”.
“After much effort we had struggled to propose the inclusion of €1.2 million to provide funding for 2017. This would have been considerably less than the minimum needed to drive the project forward at the required and desired pace.
“The second Bid Book envisaged that a budget of €44.2m would be needed in 2017 for the project. It was expected that this sum would largely come from both LAs (local authorities) as neither the State nor the EU funding would start to flow until later in 2019 and into 2020 itself.”
He pointed out that the bid up to that point had cost €1.8 million, all bar €20,000 of which was paid for by the City Council.
He said he was “concerned at the absence to date of any definitive arrangement surrounding the funding regime”.
Mr McGrath warned that the budget for 2017 would be €4 million less than what they said it would be in its bid book.
This would result in “very negative repercussions for later in the process, delaying many critical aspects of the bid”.
He further warned in the email: “Major concerns will be not being able to drive forward business engagement to any significant extent and also not being able to put a communication strategy and communication team in place. Our ability to engage with national institutions will be badly impacted upon as well as our capacity to develop further pilot projects. Lastly, but by no means least, there will be a large negative impact on building and developing the European partnerships.”
Mr McGrath’s email was in response to Mr Kelly requesting that the ECOC team give presentation to County Councillors.
“My hope is that the presentation will provide sufficient information to enable me to subsequently undertake a conversation with the members in order to facilitate a decision of the members on the amount of the County’s financial input to ECOC,” Mr Kelly said.
In a follow-up email in November, Mr Kelly said: “While the members have given a firm commitment regarding part funding of ECOC the actual amount/share has to be determined”.
He gave a commitment to work on that “subsequent to agreement” from councillors. The pair agreed to meet to discuss the issues.
Last week marked the first anniversary of the day Galway was announced as the 2020 European Capital of Culture. There had been murmurings about the financial outlay for the event but this is the first time the chief executives of the Councils were so explicit about the implications a lack of money will have.
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