Picture the scene: the audience has filed in to see the concert, the play or the poetry reading. The usual announcements about the fire exits are made, and then an employee of the venue steps out and says: "Could I just ask any women here to raise their hands?" The raised hands are counted and the total entered in a notebook. "Now," the employee continues, "Any Jews here? Chinese? Travellers?"

Does this sound unlikely? Intrusive? Slightly demented? Arts administrators are used to justifying the existence of the arts, of artists, venues, projects, the whole panoply of creativity and imagination. The arts must have a social purpose if they are to be sustained by public funding. They must be for something. They must be relevant to today's needs. And they must be targeted at specific groups.

The current Client Report Form issued by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to all the organisations it funds makes no bones about who it thinks the arts are for. Its first question is "What percentage of your audience was female?" Boxes are supplied with the different ranges specified, 0 per cent-25 per cent, 25 per cent-35 per cent, etc. It is a relatively straightforward task to work out the gender composition of an audience. But how do you go about complying with the second directive, under the heading Cultural Diversity: "Please indicate in the boxes below the different ethnic and cultural communities and/or artists you have explicitly embraced in your work ?"

The boxes are labelled as follows: "Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Pakistani Muslim (this is a single category), Travellers, African, Caribbean and, ominously, Other."

Northern Ireland? Are there really all that many Pakistani Muslims there? Is there a significant - even a small - Jewish or Indian population? The document makes no mention of the "cultural communities" who actually live in Northern Ireland. You can refer to Pakistani Muslims but not to Catholics or Protestants. There are however, "language communities": "Please describe below these different language communities and/or artists you have explicitly-embraced in your work." The language communities are Irish and Ulster Scots.

English-speakers and men seem to be thin on the ground in Northern Ireland, at least in the eyes of the Arts Council.

What's odd about this particular example is that it clearly belongs somewhere else. It might make a certain sense to a theatre manager or community arts organiser in London, Manchester, Leeds. Presumably it makes less sense in Limavady or Lisburn or Belfast. The information required is so specific and sensitive that you would imagine the local context would have some bearing. How, in a social context as fraught as Northern Ireland can someone not find it strange to ask how many Pakistani Muslims come to events?

But forms like this are getting to be the norm, as are the assumptions they make about the role of the arts and the artist: that their function is above all social, and can be politically determined, that artists and arts administrators must justify themselves by seeking out those the state has failed. The sentimentalism which decrees that a major function of art is to deliver to the disadvantaged patronises both. There is also the underlying assumption that unless an arts centre, say, is attracting sufficient numbers from specific target-groups, then it is failing.

Is the magazine read by a few devotees a failure? The play attended by small numbers? Should we judge a writer's eligibility for a residency by the number of prison visits s/he's made? And where, in all this concern for the immediately quantifiable, is the room for the future? The play which no-wants now might be tomorrow's Godot.

The poet reading to his tiny audience might be the best thing to happen to poetry in generations. And the audience, few though they might be, might realise this. It's never about numbers.

We who work in the arts have got used to the language of performance indicators, monitoring mechanisms, audience and participant development. We've read all the reports on the arts and disability, the arts and prisons, the arts and poverty, thousands of pages where there's rarely a reference to an actual art work or artist. The endless talk of "access", often poorly understood and dimly defined, can also create a climate where many who work in the arts seem to be embarrassed by art.

I look forward to a time when access doesn't mean apologising for art or looking for something to ally it with to make it respectable. Maybe we might even get to the stage where we don't have to assume that the arts will suffer if those who control the pursestrings - the policy makers, arts council administrators, private consultants - spend some of their time, at least, thinking about that embarrassing A-word.

Peter Sirr is director of the Irish Writers' Centre. He has published four collections of poetry with Gallery Press.