The Government has failed to take control of a prestigious Irish-American programme, formerly known as the George Mitchell scholarship, after officials queried its spending and raised concerns it may owe the State money.

The head of the scholarship claims that the Government’s refusal to fund it would “hasten” the programme’s spending of a fund that includes $6.9 million (€6 million) in Irish taxpayers’ money.

It was set up in 1998 and named after George Mitchell, the US senator who played a central role in the Belfast Agreement.

Three years of correspondence, released under Freedom of Information, reveal a fractious and deteriorating relationship between the US-Ireland Alliance, which runs the programme, and the Department of Further and Higher Education, which had funded it up to 2024.

That year, the department paused its annual payment of $70,000 after the US-Ireland Alliance announced it would not be selecting a class for 2026 due to concerns about its funding.

The Alliance wanted between $32 million and $40 million in an endowment from the Irish Government. The department questioned the “funding of what could be perceived as elite education” at the expense of promoting equity of access.

That same year, the department wrote to the Alliance reminding it that it had received over $10 million from the Irish taxpayer since 1998, including $6.9 million which the Alliance still held. The department warned that if the scholarship programme was not going to resume, then the Alliance should prepare to refund the public funds.

Trina Vargo, founder of the US-Ireland Alliance, told the department in December of that year that it “owes the Mitchell Scholarship endowment fund $70,000, full stop”.

She suggested the Irish Government “has issues with organisations over which it does have oversight responsibility”, citing “the children’s hospital, bike sheds” and RTÉ. She also criticised the International Fund for Ireland, the cross-Border community project credited with laying the foundations for the peace process, as “an entity that long ago largely became a waste of money”.

In June 2025, the Alliance met the department in an exchange described by officials as “robust”. The department proposed giving the scholarship to someone else to run.

Vargo sought annual funding of $2 million from the Irish Government, which the department rejected. She also suggested the scholarship programme could be paused for “years” while the Alliance tried to find alternative funding.

In an email afterwards, Vargo told the department: “While we obviously cannot compel you to make the usual annual contribution, if you choose not to do so, that will only hasten the spending from the fund.”

In July, the department queried what the Alliance had done with an excess of $334,505 recorded in its 2024 accounts. Vargo said “the excess is not Irish Government/taxpayer money and is therefore not a matter upon which the Alliance accounts to” the department. By the end of the year, the department had proposed a new governance model for the fund, but this was rejected by the Alliance.

Earlier this year, the Alliance removed Mitchell’s name from the scholarship after he was included in the Epstein files. This was announced without the knowledge of Minister James Lawless, who tasked his officials with discussing the matter with the Alliance. During that call, an official at the department told the Alliance that “if the US-Ireland Alliance weren’t going to be our partners going forward with this … we’d be looking for alternative partners”.

Vargo said this was “not possible”. “It’s ours, we own it … to be quite blunt, it’s not something you can take and give it to somebody else …” she said.

The department separately warned the Alliance about withdrawing more than $180,650 from the fund for 2025 – the last year for which it had a class. Vargo said that the Alliance was “not required to seek approval, nor will we, to spend money from the Fund for the Mitchell Scholarship program”.

In a statement, the department said it had “continued to engage with the Alliance seeking, in good faith, to explore options that would enable the resumption of the scholarships.

“These overtures have not proved successful to date as the Alliance continues to insist that $32 million in public funding be allocated for the programme’s endowment.”

Vargo told The Irish Times: “We strongly believe in this scholarship program and the value it brings to the US-Ireland relationship, and we hope the Irish Government will begin working constructively with us to ensure its future.”