The row over traditional music and the Arts Bill raises fundamental questions about the State's relationship with the arts, writes Hugh Linehan
It looked like the ultimate Irish supergroup. Or a return to the heyday of protest politics in the 1980s. Three veteran superstars of the Irish traditional music scene, Christy Moore, Paul Brady and Paddy Moloney, showed up outside Leinster House on Thursday to protest against Section 21 of the Arts Bill, which is currently at committee stage in the Oireachtas.
The same day, the chair of the Arts Council, Patrick J. Murphy, told the committee that the proposed legislation "would undermine the integrity and decision-making process of the Council itself" and referred to the "depth of dissent and division this proposal has brought to the traditional music community and to the arts community in general".
The row has been well ventilated in the letters pages of this newspaper over the past few weeks. For those not directly affected by this debate, the issue may seem abstruse to the point of tedium, the sort of turf war which can erupt when stakes are low and egos are large. However, it raises fundamental questions about how we view culture and the State's relationship with the arts.
Under the Bill, initiated by Síle de Valera during her time as arts minister, the Arts Council would be required to set up three standing committees. Two of these would simply "assist and advise" the Council on dealing with local authorities and "on matters relating to artistic innovation", but a third committee dealing with traditional music would have the power to make recommendations on funding, effectively making it a council-within-a-council. The Government would have control over a majority of the appointments to the committee and, unlike the Arts Council itself, there would be no bar on a member of the Oireachtas being appointed.
Critics of the legislation believe that it deeply compromises the autonomy of the Council, the "arm's length" principle which, in theory, governs State funding of the arts. Supporters of the measure argue that traditional arts have been proportionately underfunded by the Arts Council over the years. The Council responds by pointing to the several other State agencies which support Irish traditional music, performance and writing in the Irish language.
What no one disputes is that the traditional arts committee is the brainchild of one man, Fianna Fáil Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, the director general of the traditional music body, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann. In their protest on Thursday, the musicians stated that: "The majority in the traditional music world could not have confidence in the ability of a committee, effectively established at the behest of one organisation, to fairly and adequately represent the views of the very wide number of bodies and individuals who do excellent work in the area."
There are two broader issues at stake here. One is the place of traditional arts within Irish society. One of the great success stories of modern Irish culture has been the ability of our traditional musicians, in particular, to reach audiences here and around the world. In the face of bland, pre-packaged, globalising mass culture, indigenous Irish music has resonated with millions of people, a success embodied in the musicians who protested outside Leinster House. To hive off traditional arts from other forms of cultural activity, it is argued, is to deny their potential to interact with artistic innovation, new technology or different cultures.
There are depressing echoes of the 1950s in some of the correspondence on this subject, in the idea of ring-fencing "native" forms of expression, or privileging them over "foreign" forms. Such notions in themselves seem particularly inappropriate in an increasingly heterogenous, multi-cultural society. The debate within the traditional arts sector, therefore, is not simply about who controls the purse strings (although that is clearly a matter of some interest); it is a conflict between two very different world views.
The second issue concerns the relationship between the Arts Council and the Government. It is now 10 years since the country got its first minister for Arts, culture and the Gaeltacht at Cabinet level. Since then, the portfolio has been shifted around, renamed and redefined, first as arts, heritage, Gaeltacht and the islands (under Síle de Valera) and now as Arts, Sport and Tourism under John O'Donoghue. While the original inclusion of the word "culture" in Michael D. Higgins's department suggested a European model of overarching government engagement, his Fianna Fail successors have shied away from articulating any particular policy, apart from the requisite platitudes about the importance of the arts to the country. What is probably more important to most artists is that State subsidies to the arts have increased enormously over the period.
However, with next year's cutbacks announced in the Estimates, the good times are over. In addition, new cultural centres and venues have sprung up around the country, most of them funded by one-off capital grants, and are now clamouring for Arts Council support. More reason than ever, one might think, to maintain the arm's length principle and keep political pressures away from funding decisions.
The Arts Bill will be voted on at committee stage next Wednesday, but the final decision on amendments will rest with O'Donoghue. To date, in his six months in office, he has appeared more concerned, understandably, with crises in the Sport and Tourism parts of his brief. Well-informed sources say that he has yet to make up his mind on Section 21, although no one underestimates the lobbying abilities and political clout of Senator Ó Murchú. This will be the first major decision for O'Donoghue to make as Minister for Arts. It may prove to be the defining one.