{"id":647506,"date":"2026-08-20T16:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/647506\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T16:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:09:13","slug":"shona-mccarthy-named-as-new-arts-council-director-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/647506\/","title":{"rendered":"Shona McCarthy named as new Arts Council director \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Arts Council<\/a> has appointed former Edinburgh Festival Fringe organiser Shona McCarthy as its new director.<\/p>\n

The council said McCarthy was appointed with the consent of Minister for Culture Patrick O\u2019Donovan<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A native of Ballycran in Co Down, McCarthy will take up her role in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n

She is chair of the International Fund for Ireland and a member of the expert panel on the UK City of Culture programme. McCarthy served as chief executive<\/a> of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society from 2015 until last year.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the council said she \u201cbrings a wealth of senior leadership experience, as well as a deep knowledge of the arts sector both in Ireland and internationally\u201c. <\/p>\n

The appointment comes after almost 18 months of turmoil at the agency after it revealed in February of last year that it had spent \u20ac6.7 million on a defunct IT project. The failure of the project led to major political and public backlash, as well as clashes with O\u2019Donovan, who commissioned an independent review to scrutinise governance and culture within the council. <\/p>\n

The council\u2019s former director Maureen Kennelly left the organisation<\/a> last year after O\u2019Donovan refused to sign off on her request for a second five-year term in charge, with management consultant Moling Ryan stepping in as interim executive director<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In recent years, State funding of the council has grown considerably, rising from \u20ac80 million in 2020 to \u20ac134 million in 2024, while staff numbers more than tripled between 2018 and 2024. <\/p>\n

The expert review said there was \u201cunplanned rapid growth\u201d in the council\u2019s staff and budget that coincided with the start of the IT project, which \u201cwould have put Arts Council staff under considerable pressure to cope with the expansion, contributing to an unstable environment\u201d. <\/p>\n

McCarthy faces the task of rallying morale at the Arts Council, which is charged with funding, developing and promoting the arts in Ireland. She will also have to oversee a budget of more than \u20ac100 million and the disbursal of thousands of grants to artists across the State. <\/p>\n

The expert report spoke of \u201cstrained\u201d relations between senior staff at the Arts Council, with staff telling the review of \u201cfactions\u201d and \u201cembarrassing behaviour\u201d by some senior managers in front of other staff and third parties. <\/p>\n

It found there was a lack of a shared vision about the new IT system, which was supposed to replace an obsolete platform used for processing millions of euro worth of grants to artists. The older system remained in use after the collapse of the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Arts Council has appointed former Edinburgh Festival Fringe organiser Shona McCarthy as its new director. The council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[42383,220700,18,117,19,17,4574],"class_list":["post-647506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-arts-council","tag-edinburgh-festival-fringe","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-patrick-odonovan"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117128709156521974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}