Just as the experts John O'Donoghue appointed were explaining how to nurture traditional arts, Comhaltas published its own plan. Is it jumping the gun on the Minister's report, asks Siobhán Long.

The star of traditional arts has been in the ascendant for quite a while. Music, song and dance of a traditional bent have been finding more oxygen and more audiences, even if their practitioners are unlikely to be lining their pockets with silver as a result. But even the most cursory of trawls will uncover a rake of artists whose primary motivation is not so much to clamber into the Fortune 500 as to enjoy the richness of their music in good company.

The traditional arts have rarely supped at the top table when it comes to funding. Arts Council grants for traditional music, for example, have historically been minuscule (€889,000 this year of a total revenue budget of €37.8 million), but the question of funding is merely one of a plethora identified by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, whose appointment in December of a committee on the traditional arts, chaired by Jerome Hynes of Wexford Festival Opera, was viewed as a singular attempt to redress the balance between them and the wider arts community.

Last week, the committee delivered its report to the Arts Council, which immediately adopted its policy recommendations. Once it has been presented to the Minister, by the end of the month, it will be published - an eagerly awaited event. (Although two members of the committee, Úna Ó Murchú - who also sits on the Arts Council - and Micheál Ó hEidhin, submitted a minority report, the council has recognised only the majority submission.)

At this year's Fleadh Cheol, in Clonmel last month, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann - the country's largest traditional-arts organisation, which receives €500,000 a year to promote Irish, as well as €50,000 a year from the Irish Music Rights Organisation, as part of a five-year agreement adopted in 1999 - launched a new five-year plan. Its proposal, called the Development Programme for the Irish Traditional Arts, requires grants of €27 million, €22.6 million of which will fund the establishment of eight regional resource centres.

The timing of the plan's publication, just two weeks before the special committee delivered its report, was viewed by some people in the traditional arts as at best curious and at worst cynical. Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, the head of Comhaltas (and Úna Ó Murchú's husband), is quick to dispel what he considers to be the myths surrounding his organisation's plan.

"The Comhaltas point of view is that ours is a programme as distinct from a policy," he says. "A policy doesn't do anything for you, but our programme is to build on what we have already and for the potential as we see it. You have to have a vision to undertake that work - and, obviously, a policy to implement that vision - but you have to have people and resources to implement the policy."

Ó Murchú says the timing of the Comhaltas (CCÉ) report is not linked to that of the submission of the special committee on the traditional arts. "There was no connection at all. We were three years working on this, and as we had Fleadh Cheol na hÉireann in Clonmel we felt that was the right place to launch it."

Dermot McLaughlin, a fiddler who used to be the Arts Council's traditional-arts officer and now runs Temple Bar Properties, is unconvinced. Speaking as a musician, he says: "I think that the timing of it was opportunistic, if not cynical. I would also question the real motivation behind it. I think that if you're talking about helping traditional musicians, the last thing they need is another necklace of buildings around the country. This is a very small country, and we have a lot of arts buildings that the taxpayer has paid for. It beggars belief that anyone would seriously argue that a major capital/building programme is the answer to anything to do with traditional music.

"That CCÉ should produce a rival plan at this stage strikes me as utterly disrespectful of a process initiated in good faith by Minister O'Donoghue, and it looks like a cynical, clumsy, old-fashioned attempt at stroke politics. The Comhaltas plan underplays its best points, namely the existence of the local branch network and the teaching and performance opportunities these provide. That is where ambition and intellectual energy should be directed, not on vanity projects."

Tom Sherlock, who manages Altan and other traditional acts, is similarly unconvinced. He views the publication as a provocative rival to the committee's report. "The fact that CCÉ trumpet this new initiative in the very week in which new guidelines on how the State might respond to the needs of the traditional arts were due to be published is, to say the least, cynical, given the fact that Minister O'Donoghue commissioned the report, in good faith, to address the real needs of traditional music, more than amply aired in the contentious debate over the Arts Bill last year. CCÉ welcomed the establishment of the committee. They had the same opportunity to make submissions to it as I and anyone else had."

Labhrás Ó Murchú is unapologetic about the scale and nature of his organisation's plans, particularly the insistence that traditional music needs a string of bricks-and-mortar projects to further its cause. He rejects any suggestion that Comhaltas could use the plethora of arts centres built in recent years around the country, from Ennis to Blanchardstown.

"We've 1,000 classes every week," he says, "but every single week we have applications from new teachers who want to run classes, and we don't have facilities to give them. Our view is that the traditional arts should be accessible to all sections of the community. There's not a hope to servicing that in a cosmetic way. But we will enter into partnership with anyone else who wants to be part of it."

Sherlock regards Comhaltas's building programme as counterproductive. "By all means let us have a debate on proper funding for traditional music, but let's keep it within the realm of reality. If we want the State to engage with us on a serious level and give traditional music and musicians the parity of esteem with other art forms we all seek, we have a responsibility to maintain a perspective - especially in relation to finance - set realistic and achievable goals and be inclusive in our outlook and aims.

"I believe the CCÉ report to be misguided and exclusive: members only need apply," he continues. "This form of centralised control runs counter to the very essence and needs of traditional music. When will this organisation acknowledge that they do not own or control traditional music?"

Dermot McLaughlin says that creative, flexible solutions are needed if the traditional arts are to continue to thrive. "This is an art form that is not suffering any serious problems. It has never been in better shape," he says. "There is no crisis. It does not look like an art form that needs a heavy-handed intervention. It does not need its liberty curtailed by any ideology or movement or politically ambitious personality.

"I am very concerned that control and ownership of my music can be claimed by any movement that speaks for only its own acquisitive interests and whose ambitions and behaviour seem disconnected from the reality of being a musician. My guess is that Jerome Hynes's committee will get the full picture of what musicians and what this art form need, because his committee has made a point of consulting widely about these issues."

So what does McLaughlin see as the key components of a strategy for traditional arts? "I hope that the committee produces something that is clear and simple: there are no complex issues to be sorted," he says. "I hope they deal with a range of areas, including acknowledgment and recognition of the traditional arts, direct support for artists, more and better access to source materials througharchives and accessible collections, a definition of traditional arts that embraces instrumental and vocal music and dance, the importance of Gaeltacht arts, business and touring support for international activity. And, I believe, ensuring executive expertise within the Arts Council is a priority."