The Department of Foreign Affairs spent €2,570 on six paintings bought as part of an exhibition at a Sligo gallery in 2020.
It was a portion of the €83,705 spent by the Department on artworks for its embassies, consulates and offices in the past two years.
According to theJournal.ie, the €2,570 spent on the six paintings in January 2020 were for arts works that were originally part of an exhibition featuring 129 artists in Sligo’s Hamilton Gallery.
The exhibition, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, was thematically centred on Ireland’s Decade of Commemoration, and the artists involved used a major poem by W B Yeats for inspiration.
The paintings varied in prices from €375 to €500.
