The doors of the city’s beleaguered arthouse cinema should be kept open, ‘but not at any cost’.

That was the consensus at a meeting of Galway City Council on Monday, which was disrupted by dozens of protesters who stormed the foyer of City Hall calling on the local authority to ‘Save Pálás’.

It was announced in December that Element Pictures — which leases the building from the Council for a peppercorn rent — would close the cinema at the end of February.

The meeting was told that the cinema had been mired in controversy since the Council purchased the site for its construction in 2007 for €1.9 million.

Mayor Peter Keane blasted the protesters who caused Monday’s meeting to be temporarily suspended for failing to grasp all the local authority had spent to get the cinema opened in the first place.

“Cutting and pasting emails; coming up here, with drums, roaring and shouting . . . it’s not like we didn’t know about it. We were the ones who put the finance on the table when it had to be rescued,” he said.

The Council and various other state bodies footed the bill when Solas, the original project promoters, a charity chaired by Lelia Doolan, ran into difficulties — failing to secure private funding and hitting various issues during the construction period.

The project was eventually opened in 2018, about €3 million overbudget and nine years after its mooted completion date.

The Charities Regulator issued a damning verdict of the project in the same year — criticising accounting practices, oversight, corporate governance and the lack of skills and competence of Solas-Galway Picture Palace Teoranta to manage such a project.

Similar concerns were echoed by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), where TDs labelled the cinema a “waste of public money”.

Mayor Keane got agreement that an “independent commercial appraisal” of the cinema take place “at the appropriate time”.

Councillors were told that the local authority was yet to receive a formal request to end the lease from Element, leading to some local representatives, including Cllr Mike Cubbard (Ind), to question if they were “flying a kite”.

Pictured: Protestors who interrupted this week’s meeting of Galway City Council to voice their opposition to the closure of the Pálás Cinema. Photo: Ciarán MacChoncarraige.