With all the controversy surrounding Mary Harney's holiday, her announcement regarding the number of Community Employment (CE) places annually allocated to FAS could almost have gone unnoticed. The proposal includes a cut of almost 10,000 places over the next five years. While implementation of cutbacks is still under discussion, it seems increasingly clear that the arts can no longer rely on CE programmes as a means of operational subsidy.
Arts centres, with their heavy reliance on FAS staff, may be the hardest hit. In 1998, The Arts Council contributed £2.18 million to arts centres, while FAS contributed a staggering £1.16 million, 34 per cent of overall operational requirements.
The average contribution by FAS to the staff and overhead costs of an arts centre is £100,000 per annum. While grateful for the cash input, the centres have long recognised that FAS schemes are not always the right answer either for participants, or for their own needs. Difficulties have recently become more acute because of the proposed cuts, and because of changes in the overall economy.
Mary Coll, director of the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick, says that despite the Belltable's urgent staffing needs, it is unlikely that the required number of staff vacancies this year will be filled: "Job opportunities for the semiskilled in the Limerick area have opened up considerably. Our education officer, who completed a CE scheme, recently left to take up a position as an assembly-line worker in Dell computers. His total earnings in that job, including overtime and bonuses, will exceed both those of my assistant director and my marketing manager."
In order to replace her current CE workers with permanent staff, she would require a further £117,000 subsidy per annum. "If we were to lose our scheme, I would need to recruit at least eight part-time/full-time workers. Even at subsistence wages, with the added employer's PRSI the figure would cripple us."
Sandy Fitzgerald, executive director of the City Arts Centre, is also deeply concerned. "If these proposed cuts come to pass, then it will totally undermine the new arts plan," says Sandy, going on to express his disappointment that there has been little consultation by FAS or the Department of Enterprise and Employment with those who have most experience in running the schemes.
Both FAS and the Department are sending out alarming signals. Without being too specific, there is talk of protecting schemes in the "dependency/care" range. Schemes, for example, dealing with child care, substance abuse programmes, or those which fulfil the local "partnership or local development framework" will, it seems, be given priority.
This is not a new problem for the arts. For nearly 20 years, arts organisations have been flagging these problems to the Arts Council. So where is the problem resolved in the much-trumpeted arts plan? Nessa O'Mahony, Head of Public Affairs in the Arts Council, insists that some financial provision has been made, but won't be drawn on exactly how much.
`WE HAVE been making the case to government regarding FAS schemes," she says. "We are aware of the difficulty facing arts organisations, but we are not the only answer. The new plan is about capacity building in the arts. We will be looking at how arts organisations run themselves, and we welcome suggestions from individuals and organisations regarding this problem."
So, if an arts centre's CE scheme is pulled tomorrow, will the Arts Council cough up? "We have to look at things in a global context," replies Nessa O'Mahony. "I can't say how much we have put aside, but we are aware of the problem." Cold comfort, then, to those on the ground currently reliant on FAS, but chilling news for the newer buildings funded under the Cultural Development Incentive Schemes.
These new facilities included FAS staffing as part of their organisational running costs, right from feasibility study stage. The question now is, from where will these additional funds be drawn - and what priority will these venues be given in the queue forming outside the Arts Council's door?
TOSTAL, the representative organisation for Art Centres currently funded by The Arts Council, has invited Arts Council staff members to its October meeting, where FAS cutbacks will be firmly on the agenda. A member of Tostal, Mary Coll is clear that existing venues will have to top the list: "As existing clients, our needs will have to take priority," she says. "Our long-standing reliance on these schemes is totally regressive. If we have to go back to a volunteer structure, in a time of supposed increased arts professionalism, then I'm afraid we have completely eaten our own tail and the promise of the new Arts Plan with it."
Mary Harney's proposed cuts leave the arts sector in a bind. While many believe the schemes are not the answer to staffing requirements in arts venues, they question the Arts Council's ability to fill the gap, and wonder what real provision has been made for the eventuality.
According to the director of the Arts Council, Patricia Quinn, people in the arts sector have to "make up their minds - either the schemes are a good thing or they are not". If they are, then she suggests: "The arts sector as a whole needs to lobby FAS and The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to protect the schemes for the arts."
On the other hand, she points to the fact that if FAS and the Department regard the arts as buoyant, and therefore no longer eligible for these schemes, then they should accord industry status to the sector. "If FAS regards us as an industry, then they should provide supports and training facilities to the arts, as they do to other industries." How this industrial classification will assist the short and long-term staffing requirements of arts centres and other venues is not clear. But a drum beat which has been sounding in 70 Merrion Square for nearly two decades now is getting ever louder, and it may prove to be the biggest challenge to the Millennium Arts Plan yet.
