IS THE cup half empty or half full? According to the chairman and director of the Arts Council, its Budget allocation is good news despite what the Department of Finance calls a "minor adjustment" a cut of £100,000 to £18.4 million since the Estimates, writes Paddy Woodworth. On the face of it, a 13 per cent increase, in the current climate is still to be welcomed. And the fact that the council's grant has increased steeply under Michael D. Higgins from £11.5 million in 1993 will always stand to the credit of the first Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.
Nevertheless, set against the expectations raised by the Three Year Plan, endorsed by the council, the minister and the government, this year's allocation is close to a disaster. The plan envisaged a grant of £19.6 million last year, building to £21.8 million in the current year, and £26.1 million in 1997. It does not take a genius to calculate that, by these parameters, the council is now more than £6 million or 25 per cent short of the minimum that all parties concerned are agreed the sector needs.
The argument that the arts sector is underfunded relative to other sectors that it therefore needed a boost in funding well over and above what is required elsewhere before it reaches parity seems dangerously close to being lost. All we heard last year about the "front loading" of the plan with the council still expecting its missing £3 million from 1995 right up to November clearly goes by the board. The news that the council itself has accepted that the plan must be implemented over five rather than three years may be an acceptance of the inevitable, but its implications now need to be spelt out in detail. We await the revised version with interest.
