Ireland has the less-than-proud boast of being among the most centralised countries in Europe and the Fianna Fail decision to abolish rates in 1977 still cripples local councils.

Within their small budgets, the arts do not currently make a large claim; one Irish council, for instance, spends £100,000 out of a budget of £45 million - but this is still progress from the nearly zero percentage that the arts would have claimed before 1985. That year, with Arts Council support, Clare County Council appointed the first county arts officer.

The fact that that council has not now had an arts officer for two-and-a-half years is, however, indicative of the problems which the scheme has run into nationwide. There have been difficulties within Clare County Council, in identifying the "line of command" into which the arts officer should fit - to whom he or she should report.

The Arts Council has just published a report on arts and local authorities and guidelines for appointing officers, and it asked Clare to delay appointing its officer until these were in place. Now a formal agreement between the local authority and the Arts Council will have to be made before the Council will lend support to the authority's arts initiatives, and best practice will have to be followed in the appointment of arts officers.

Although it was the Council's intention in 1985 that each county council would have an arts officer, there is none working in North or South Tipperary, Carlow, or Westmeath, as well as in Clare, and although the Arts Plan in 1995 called for an arts plan to be prepared in each county, there are at least four counties in which no serious preparation has been made.