Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
NORTHERN IRELAND
DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURE, ARTS
AND LEISURE
2 NOVEMBER 2004
Q20 Mr Allan: Are custodians on site?
Dr McGinley: No, it is open to
the public.
Q21 Mr Allan: It is an open site
at this point?
Dr McGinley: At that time, yes.
Q22 Mr Allan: The study was set up
in 1987 and comes back really telling the Minister what the Minister
wanted to hear which is "Yes, we can have a grand scheme
here and it is going to work because we are going to get 160,000
people a year through". Does anyone double check this?
Dr McGinley: Yes, Chairman, there
was a rigorous assessment at the time by main funders. Consultant
A report, for example, was an appraisal that was undertaken. The
original concept report consisted of four documents: work done
by Queen's University, by consultants called MeConsult who looked
at the financial management of the centre and other experts and,
indeed, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board did a tourism study.
The concept document came out of four major pieces of work that
were presented to the Minister.
Q23 Mr Allan: But they were all wrong?
Dr McGinley: As it turned out,
Chairman.
Q24 Mr Allan: The problem is no consultant
seems to want to come back and say "Well, if you open this
up you might get 30 or 40,000 a year, so if you do something small
it will be okay but go and do the big one, that is going to be
a financial disaster". This seems to be the repeated pattern,
everyone comes back and says "Yes, you will do something
grand". Is that a fair description of what happened here?
Dr McGinley: I think there was
a genuine attempt to create a project of international significance
because if the 300 acre archaeological site had been developed
this would have been significant. Indeed the Navan Fort itself
has been a contender for World Heritage status so it is of that
ilk.
Q25 Mr Allan: All the funders and
everybody is taken in by these reports which, with the benefit
of hindsight, we know now were grossly misleading and used completely
the wrong comparators: the Giant's Causeway which is one of the
symbolic natural sites that anyone coming to Northern Ireland
will want to visit and the Ulster American Park which presumably
has got a particular focus on international aspects?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q26 Mr Allan: We look at it now and
know those were the wrong comparators. Everyone has been taken
in, the money has gone in. Then it seems pretty obvious within
a couple of years from the Centre opening in 1993 that it is going
to fail and still nobody does anything.
Dr McGinley: In year one, Chairman,
it exceeded its own target of 30,000 achieving 39,000; year two
was when it started not to achieve its targets and there was a
gross, it was 47,000 visitors and the target was 50,000. It was
really going into year three that Navan itself approached Government
and said that they recognised that they had been ambitious in
their aspirations and they downgraded both at that time in 1996
and also later in 1998.
Q27 Mr Allan: Here is where we might
want to quote things at the Department because here we have got
a Navan director saying "We are not going to meet it, we
know that now", and this is 1995-96, "We want long term
revenue funding". It says all the way through the report
"The assumption is the directors will need long term revenue
funding" and there does not seem to be anybody in the Government
side getting a grip of that. Everybody seems to be ducking it
on the Government side, is that fair?
Dr McGinley: It was two years
after opening before the directors came. When they first approached
Government they were confident that they would reach viability
and sustainability and there is evidence on the file to show that,
in fact that was what they stated. It was really 1996 before they
recognised themselves this was not going to happen and that was
when the Department of Education came in for the first time with
a funding package. Now in the interim the International Fund for
Ireland had funded them for the first two years, £350,000,
in order to cover capital overruns and so on. Government, when
it was first realised that this was a long term issue, brought
in Consultant B to do the report to look at the options and look
at "is there a way forward" and to work with Navan on
the determination of that.
Q28 Mr Allan: We bring in various
consultants at this stage. Here is a damning comment in paragraph
1.22 on page 12, we get told that there is some bail out that
has to come through and so a monitoring review committee is set
up. It meets only on three occasions and it says here "the
record of these discussions suggests that they were rarely used
by officials to probe present and future trading". Again,
it seems that the Government are saying: "We have got a problem
here." It is bowling out some money to fire fight but no-one
is getting a grip of it and the monitoring review committee is
still not really getting a grip of it.
Dr McGinley: Chairman, the monitoring
review, I will admit that the record keeping could have been more
reflective of the actual discussions but I have been assured by
officials who were present at those meetings that issues such
as trading performance were considered, though that should have
been reflected more fully. The latter minutes were in order as
the Audit Office have identified. In terms of the meetings that
you referred to, the monitoring committee first met in February
the year before the rescue package started and they agreed that
they would have a series of meetings. They predated those meetings
and the first meeting was to be in July 1999. However, it was
agreed that to enable some trading performance to be considered
that meeting be held in December, and that was agreed in July,
at the July meeting. What actually happened was, December was
when devolution started so literally the new departments were
being formed, including my own, so I think it was not unreasonable
that meeting was postponed by a month. In January it was agreed
the meeting should be held in September, the fire happened and
therefore that meeting did not happen until December. There were
a series of issues and problems but throughout that there was
extensive contact between Navan and respective departments in
terms of monitoring what was going on.
Q29 Mr Allan: Was it ever considered
to pull the plug at this phase: 1997-98-99 phase?
Dr McGinley: I think genuinely
Government were trying to work with the Navan directors who were
very confident that the Centre could be turned around and in good
faith worked with them to try and do so.
Q30 Mr Allan: We will just come to
the present finally. The Centre closed in June 2001. The staff
presumably were paid off and got redundancy at that point?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q31 Mr Allan: That has all gone.
Armagh Council is taking over now. They will have to recruit new
staff?
Dr McGinley: They intend to use
their existing tourism staff.
Q32 Mr Allan: What were the trustee
liabilities of £200,000 you have had to pay off?[1]
Dr McGinley: There were issues
around the suppliers who were owed insurance, electricity, utility
costs, et cetera.
Q33 Mr Allan: Do the land and buildings
now belong to the District Council?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q34 Mr Allan: They have been transferred
so they are in public ownership?
Dr McGinley: That is right.
Q35 Mr Allan: Is new capital money
going to go in?
Dr McGinley: There have been no
approaches, Chairman. The Council are going to concentrate on
a living history approach rather than a capital approach at this
stage.
Q36 Mr Allan: The Council now could
bid in to things like the Heritage Lottery Fund and all these
things and perhaps have a better chance of success because they
have a better model going?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q37 Mr Allan: Do you know what their
projections are for visitor numbers?
Dr McGinley: Their other two centres
are attracting approximately 40,000 visitors per annum. I think
if they achieve the final target that the directors were looking
for of around 30,000 they would be pleased. There is seasonal
opening and they are concentrating on running six events in the
next summer season to attract visitors.
Q38 Mr Allan: Have you had any other
similar problems since then? This is a long running one, this
one goes all the way back to 1998-99. Have you had any other sites
in your Department that have similarly had flawed visitor projections?
Dr McGinley: Chairman, I think
there was a level of optimism in those early days that I think
now is much more challenged. Anything of a more recent nature,
W5 for example is one of our successes where it is now the most
visited facility after the Giant's Causeway. It is our best performer
of our museums and galleries for Northern Ireland. I think it
appeared optimistic but in fact we have managed to show that we
have got a targeted market there. I think it is because there
is clarity of the market and the purpose.
Q39 Mr Allan: For the record, we
visited yesterday and we could not get colleagues off the laser
harps.
Dr McGinley: There is a lie detector,
Chairman, that our former Assembly Members used in the past.
1 Note by witness: To clarify that the Trustee
liabilities of £200,000 were met by Armagh City and District
Council and not by Central Government. Back
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