Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
NORTHERN IRELAND
DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURE, ARTS
AND LEISURE
2 NOVEMBER 2004
Q40 Mr Allan: We kept clear of that
one! So you are confident that this will not happen again and
that when you want to project visitor numbers and create a business
plan you will employ miserable consultants who will give you serious
estimates rather than ones which tell you what you want to hear?
Dr McGinley: I think, Chairman,
for example, we now have procedures like Gateway where if you
start to use a Gateway project, which my Department have used
on library services very successfully, that immediately rings
warning bells at a very early stage so you avoid walking into
those sorts of traps.
Q41 Mr Bacon: Dr McGinley, who held
the lead responsibility in Government for this?
Dr McGinley: The Department of
Education were the department which had the legal authority to
fund.
Q42 Mr Bacon: Why are you here not
them?
Dr McGinley: You are right to
point out that my Department is only responsible for 2% of the
expenditure—
Q43 Mr Bacon: I did not mention the
amount of expenditure that your Department is responsible for.
Dr McGinley: We inherited it.
Q44 Mr Bacon: That is a very slick
and fast answer to a question I have not asked.
Dr McGinley: We inherited the
responsibility on devolution.
Q45 Mr Bacon: You mentioned that
there were financial guidelines issued by the Treasury which all
departments follow. Is not part of being an accounting officer
also about management making sure that the accountability trail
is there?
Dr McGinley: I agree entirely.
That is the primary focus of an accounting officer's job.
Q46 Mr Bacon: We are not talking
about the Stone Age, are we? We are talking about the mid 1990s
when this thing was launched when there was already, in the mid
1990s, a lot known about project management and how to deliver
a project successfully.
Dr McGinley: A project of this
scale and size was unique at the time.
Q47 Mr Bacon: Did you have anyone
involved in this who was also involved in the Dome at the same
time?
Dr McGinley: The Dome was subsequent
and it is interesting to note that a lot of lessons there are
very similar to the lessons of Navan.
Q48 Mr Bacon: The Dome was subsequent
to this in terms of the project management timetable?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q49 Mr Bacon: So do people go from
here, the people running this, to run it there?
Dr McGinley: I do not think so,
Chairman.
Q50 Mr Bacon: Can I ask you to turn
to page 37, paragraph 4.12. When the consultants started to come
in, there is a reference to Consultant B being surprised that
the marketing strategy in 1995 had not been updated for two and
a half years since the previous marketing manager had been made
redundant. Why would you not have a marketing strategy for two
and a half years?
Dr McGinley: I think, Chairman,
it was that there was a marketing strategy in place but it had
not been revisited. One of the cost savings that the Navan board
made was the reduction in number of staff and indeed the marketing
manager, as you rightly say, was made redundant at that time.
I think there was not a targeted marketing effort and that is
what Consultant B felt, that it had led to a downturn in visitor
numbers because it was not being targeted.
Q51 Mr Bacon: If officials were consistently
concerned about the commercial viability of Navan, as it says
they were in paragraph 5.7, why would there not have been an effort
to develop a marketing strategy if things looked like they were
not working?
Dr McGinley: The Government came
in officially for the first time in 1997 with Consultant B's report,
that was why we commissioned Consultant B because of these concerns.
Q52 Mr Bacon: In paragraph 5.4, a
previous Member mentioned this point about the representatives
of the Committee meeting only three times, that was over how long
a period?
Dr McGinley: Over the period of
the rescue package of two years.
Q53 Mr Bacon: The Committee that
was charged with monitoring this whole thing met three times in
two years?
Dr McGinley: Yes.
Q54 Mr Bacon: Just over once a year?
Dr McGinley: Yes because of a
series of circumstances. Behind the scenes there was a lot of
work going on in terms of day to day, indeed monthly, monitoring
of expenditure.
Q55 Mr Bacon: You mentioned the fire
earlier, why would the monitoring committee not be able to sit
down as a group, especially with all these different funding sources,
they could meet in a pub if they needed to and talk about the
problems? Why did this committee only just about manage to meet
once a year?
Dr McGinley: Chairman, the monitoring
committee met formally but informally individual departments and
officials between departments were meeting with Navan. Indeed
the period of the fire is a case in point, my own Department—and
this was during this period—had over 20 meetings during
the January to June period before closure. There were a considerable
number of meetings held, it was just that they were not formal
monitoring committee meetings and were not recorded as such.
Q56 Mr Bacon: On page 11 there is
a discussion about the Audit Office's analysis and it says in
paragraph 1.16 that your Department told the Audit Office you
were ". . . surprised that there was an expectation on the
part of the trustees of continued core funding as various papers
confirm that the trustees were aware that the funding which ended
in March 2001 was time limited."
Dr McGinley: Yes, Chairman.
Q57 Mr Bacon: It goes on to say in
the next paragraph "The Chairman of the Trustees has asked
me to record that it was not his understanding that the funding
was to be limited". How could there have been two such radically
different interpretations of the same facts?
Dr McGinley: Chairman, the letter
of offer very, very clearly states that this was time limited
to March.
Q58 Mr Bacon: In fact, not just a
business plan but it says again in 1.17 that the Department asked
the trustees to submit their next business plan early and that
their meetings with your Department ". . . had always given
the impression that further funding was under consideration."
Dr McGinley: No, Chairman. In
the early pre rescue package, it would have been 1996, the Department
of Education did make it clear that they were concerned about
supporting the directors but the rescue package which was offered
to the directors in 1997 is very clear in the letter of offer
that this was time bound and time limited.
Q59 Mr Bacon: How do you think they
could have got the impression that there was further funding under
consideration?
Dr McGinley: Possibly we were
overly supportive, Chairman, but we did make it very clear and,
indeed, the reason—
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