After a heated public meeting last night, the official Facebook page for Limerick, City of Culture 2014 has been hacked.
Limerick's reign as City of Culture has been thrown in to chaos mere days into 2014, as the Artistic Director Karl Wallace and two of his colleagues handed in their resignation on January 2nd.
The artistic community of the city were quick to speak out in support of Wallace, and called for answers from the Limerick City of Culture Board.
A public meeting was held in the Clarion Hotel in the city last night, a video of which has since been posted on YouTube by Eire Leaks, (see below).
Around midday today, the Facebook page for the City of Culture was updated with the following post:
At 11.05pm last night in an act of solidarity to support the cultural groups and citizens of Limerick this page, the official Limerick City of Culture 2014 page was taken over into in order to ensure that the people of Limerick and the cultural groups are heard and that no more fudging and duplicity will take place in public office.
We are seeking a public statement from Conn Murray City and County Manager on the five interviewed candidates for the CEO post,with details of where and when these interviews took place.
We are also calling for more people to attend the next public meeting to enable growing support for good governance on the city of culture board, which up to now has shown itself to be incompetent appointing staff without due process and loosing three senior staff members on their watch.
We further continue the call for the resignation of CEO Patricia Ryan who has no expertise in management, culture or arts or finance. Instead we call for the post of CEO to be advertised alongside the post for Artistic Director that was announced last night and that expressions of interest are sought for both posts. Ms Ryan can apply for one of these posts in competition that is fair and transparent.
Irrespective of whether Mr Cox recommended or did not recommend Ms Ryan, we believe this is besides the point as Mr Murray was aware of their association and so were other members of the committee. The fact that a chairman of a board can negate having any involvement in a key appointment is staggering.
Furthermore we call for the complete resignation of the registered board of directors which currently stands at just two people - on official company house records Mr Tom Gilligan Finance Director and Mr Conn Murray are the only two registered directors, the remainder of people that call themselves board members, such as Mr Cox are a board in name only with no legal authority and a committee with no official jurisdiction. Their acceptance of the resignations of three posts this week should be deemed as null and void as they have no legal authority to make those decisions. A brand new team of professional people is required to ensure that this project is salvaged and given the best possible chance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPkyrWkTSo
