If the pulse of the tradition is in any way reflected in the robust response to the Arts Council's publication last week of Towards A Policy For The Traditional Arts, it's probably safe to say that its state of health is in the pink, reports Siobhán Long

The report was the result of nine months of work, including extensive consultation, by five experts whom John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, had asked to devise a three- to five-year action plan encompassing a coherent policy framework for the traditional arts. Chaired by Jerome Hynes, deputy chairman of the Arts Council and chief executive of Wexford Festival Opera, the committee included two ministerial appointees, Mícheál Ó hEidhin and Katy Verling, and two Arts Council representatives, Philip King and Úna Ó Murchú. The Arts Council adopted the recommendations of the committee as official policy as soon as it presented its report, on September 13th.

But it wasn't all plain sailing. On August 31st Ó Murchú and Ó hEidhin submitted a minority report to the Arts Council. They objected to their colleagues' methods and conclusions across a range of areas, including how the traditional arts are defined, who archives them and, crucially, how they are funded. That means that only Hynes, King and Verling signed the committee's report.

Ó hEidhin has grave misgivings about the committee's report. The primary one is about what he insists were fundamental changes made between the time it was signed off, on July 13th, and the time it was submitted to the Arts Council, two months later. He and Ó Murchú wrote their minority report in response to the July version, not the September one, he says. Nor, he adds, was there any consultation between the committee's members in the interim, to sanction the amendments. "Fifty-nine changes were made," he says. "The education section is totally rewritten. There's no section that hasn't omissions, additions and alterations."

Central to the objections of Ó hEidhin and Ó Murchú is the official report's proposal that the Arts Council "assume and fulfil a primary role of responsibility for the development and support of the traditional arts". Ó hEidhin regards that as anathema to the healthy progression of the tradition."They say that it would be inappropriate for any body other than the Arts Council to assume full custodianship for the traditional arts," he says (despite the fact that, according to the Arts Council, "it would neither be appropriate nor possible for the council to assume the role of sole provider of funding and support for the traditional arts").

Two of the key recommendations of the official report - which acknowledges the long-standing chasm between the council and Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the cultural organisation run by Úna Ó Murchú's husband, Labhrás - are that the Arts Council "should develop funding relationships with local branches of CCÉ around the country" and that "the Arts Council and CCÉ must make new efforts to improve their relationship".

One point of overwhelming agreement among traditional musicians, administrators and fans surveyed in the days following the report's publication is that the branch network developed by Comhaltas is a resounding success and should be wholeheartedly supported by Arts Council funding.

Philip King regards the consultation process that informs the report as the first step in a journey that will promote above all the vibrant heart of traditional music, song and dance and the welfare of its practitioners. "Traditional arts have always been at the centre of what we are culturally. They are our accent, our unique voice, and they are the way in which the mass of the people express themselves," he says.

"I felt privileged to have been part of this process, and the consultation with the public was hugely valuable in informing the committee's work. It was an embracing, inclusive process which was the first communication of good faith with those who operate within the traditional arts. Had we not listened to their views it would have been impossible to write this report."

Paddy Glackin, the fiddler, RTÉ producer and former traditional-music officer at the Arts Council, warmly welcomes the report. "It's the first official document which states its position on traditional music," he says. "I also think it's a positive document: it has attempted to define what the traditional arts are; it re-emphasises the notion of parity of esteem for traditional music, song and dance, which I think is very important. The appointment of a traditional-music officer" - a post discontinued in the early 1990s, when the brief was expanded to encompass other forms of music - "will be really important, and most things will probably flow from there. But it will be important that whoever gets that job will be impartial."

The Donegal fiddler Dermot McLaughlin - who happens to be the former traditional-music officer whose brief was expanded in the 1990s - is equally optimistic about the new policy document's potential to light a path well into the future. "The musicians, the artists and the process of transmission are at the centre of the report's recommendations, and that's great," he says.

"The report is clear on Gaeltacht and Irish-language traditional arts, and this bodes well for the future. The recognition of the key role that local activity can play in sustaining our traditional arts, particularly through the local branch network of Comhaltas and other organisations, is well judged and analysed.

"I also think this marks a significant moment of change in how the State looks at indigenous culture, and I'd see this as a good step forward in starting to devise ways of responding creatively to interculturalism, multiculturalism, cultural diversity or whatever label you wish to use."

The most frequently voiced reservation since the report was published, last Tuesday, has been about the perennially thorny question of money. In the report's absence of conclusions about how much money is needed to implement its recommendations, most commentators point out that insufficient funding could undermine the significant momentum that the policy has gathered since word of its adoption by the Arts Council emerged, less than three weeks ago.

"The Minister will have to deliver," says McLaughlin, "and the Arts Council will have to make clear, if difficult, decisions within their 2005 funding decisions in order to give life to the report. This is now a clear priority, so even in a standstill funding situation there will be pressure and expectation that the council will start delivering on their promises."

Harry Bradley, a Belfast flute player, is unequivocal in his welcome for the committee's findings. "I see the proposals in the report to be well tailored to meet the needs of Irish traditional music in our modern society. They aim for inclusion, acceptance of the diversity inherent in the traditional arts and the organisations who nurture and continue them, and a desire to place Irish traditional arts in a place of dignity that befits the beauty and complexity of this unique set of art forms.

"Overall, I feel that this new approach to the traditional arts, if adopted, may finally give the Irish traditions room to breathe and flourish along artistic lines, away from dictatorial market forces or constrictive and domineering institutionalisation."

Another striking feature of the Arts Council's new policy is its almost complete absence of recommendations for capital investment. Most of the committee's recommendations refer to performance and touring supports, awards and bursaries, as well as emphasising the need to better fund the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

"The greatest resource available to promote and sustain the traditional arts is the people who strive and sometimes toil tocontinue them, support them, develop them and revitalise them," says Bradley. "Put the funding in reach of these individuals or organisations, where it will be most effective at an artistic level. There are enough large venues in Ireland and not enough fresh, vital, challenging performances emanating from them.

"I am convinced that our distinctly Irish verve can be very positively promoted in an atmosphere of optimism and support, where our artists know that they are respected and valued. Such an atmosphere is more likely to exist for a kid with a scholarship in a kitchen in Miltown Malbay of a July evening than in a state-of-the-art auditorium."

The Arts Council's new policy poses its own challenges for those exponents of the tradition who haven't been first in the queue when it comes to completing well-researched funding applications. The need for musicians to engage more with the funding process is highlighted by Tom Sherlock, manager of Altan and Séamus Begley, among others.

"If all of us involved in traditional music rise to the challenge contained for us in the report," he says, "and if we seek to engage productively and imaginatively with the Arts Council, and other State agencies, to actively promote our own art and music, both here at home and internationally, then traditional musicians and, indeed, the wider community stand to reap the benefits."

The pay-off can be significant, he says, as long as few key considerations are taken seriously by both the traditional-arts sector and the Arts Council. "Musicians and bodies involved in the creation, playing, teaching, transmission and promotion of traditional music have a new opportunity to take this report at face value and engage with the Arts Council and other State bodies in new and potentially beneficial partnerships.

"Equally, the challenge for the Arts Council is that they need to be seen to urgently act on this new policy, to secure the confidence of traditional musicians. It is critical that the many far-reaching recommendations contained in the report are implemented. The parameters are clearly set down. It is now up to all of us to work together to make sure that it can never more be said that traditional music plays second fiddle when to comes to the interaction between the artist and the State."