THE City of Culture row that raged with all the huff and puff of Storm Darwin at the beginning of the year has blown up again with concerns being expressed over the fact that the recruitment of a new chief executive has yet to be advertised.
And with signs that little has been learnt from past mistakes, Labour Party city councillor Joe Leddin was among those to express his surprise this week.
He told the Limerick Post that he understood that a national and international search would commence to fill the position immediately after the resignation two months ago of the former CEO Patricia Ryan and artistic director Karl Wallace.
“While we are extremely fortunate to have a person of the calibre of the current interim CEO Mike Fitzpatrick, the whole basis for the original controversy was the apparent lack of transparency and due process,” Cllr Leddin commented.
“The fact that the project is now once again in the media spotlight for the wrong reasons is worrying and I believe the board must clarify the situation regarding the future management of the project without delay,” he said.
With public meetings, almost daily resignations and constant controversy in the opening days of the festival, the King Lear-like madness surrounding City of Culture now sadly appears to be picking up gusto once more and putting Limerick in the eye of another national media storm.
Sinn Fein city councillor Maurice Quinlivan said question marks regarding the management of City of Culture have now been further underlined by this latest “fiasco”.
“There is clearly now a significant shadow over the project. It is pretty incredible that no advertisement for the CEO of the City of Culture has been made to date,” Cllr Quinlivan remarked.
And while it has not yet advertised the position of chief executive/creative director, the City of Culture board has, however, tendered for a marketing and communications company to promote the project.
This has been described as a perplexing move, considering that the publicly-funded Limerick Marketing Company was set up last July to specifically market the city and events such as City of Culture.
