The Director of the Arts Council Ms Patricia Quinn, is to resign following the Council's decision to abandon the five-year strategy for the arts agreed by the last Council and the Government in 2002.
In her letter of resignation sent yesterday to the Arts Council chairwoman Ms Olive Braiden, Ms Quinn said that "in circumstances where the Council's precipitate action overturns Government policy and is contrary to the considered advice of its own executive, I am in honour obliged to give notice of my decision to resign my position as director".
The current Arts Council, appointed by the Minister for the Arts, Mr O'Donoghue, last August, decided on Thursday to "set aside" the Arts Plan 2002-2006 as soon as it completed an examination of its aims and priorities. The existing plan has been criticised from within the new Council and by some in the arts community for being too "top-down" in its approach to the arts, while the severe cut in last year's arts budget also ensured that its funding targets could not now be met, despite a significant increase for 2004. As a result the funding expectations of arts organisations would not be met.
Rather than accept compromise proposals such as the rescheduling of the funding targets and other revisions, the Council decided on Thursday night to abandon the plan altogether.
Ms Quinn, who has been full-time director of the Council since 1996, was closely associated with the Arts Plan. Her resignation comes a mid differences is the over the role of the Arts Council.
The now abandoned plan was devised to change the role of the Arts Council from being merely a funding body to being a development agency which would seek to encourage outside bodies to fund arts activities.
Supporters of the outlook behind the now abandoned plan, including Ms Quinn, favour a model whereby the council would make decisions as to which arts organisations to support on the basis of specific policy aims and targets set by the council.Critics of the plan believed this was too directive an approach, and that the council should largely respond to the needs of arts organisations rather than dictate policy. Some arts organisations had also felt under the current plan the council did not respond adequately to their needs.
In a statement put on its web site on Thursday evening, the Arts Council said its decision to set aside the plan and examine its aims and priorities "will ensure that the Arts Council facilitates and responds to the needs of artists, arts organisations and the public".
Ms Braiden last night expressed the council's "gratitude and thanks" to its director. She said the council acknowledged "the genuine strength of opinion" that caused Ms Quinn to resign and expressed regret that she was leaving. Yet the council "fully respect her commitment to the arts and to her own policy position", Ms Braiden said in a statement.
Last night the minister Mr John O'Donoghue paid tribute to Ms Quinn.
"She was instrumental in instigating additional funding for the arts from successive governments and I wish her well in the future".