Patricia Quinn did not want a clear arts strategy relegated to secondplace, writes Belinda McKeon.
Back in April 2002, in the Merrion Square offices of the Arts Council, when the then Minister for the Arts, Ms Síle de Valera, announced that the Government would be fully backing the council's Arts Plan 2002-2006, the relief and delight of Ms Patricia Quinn was clear for all to see.
The endorsement of the plan and its six key objectives amounted to Government endorsement of the new identity of the Arts Council for which Ms Quinn had long been rooting.
No longer merely a funding body, it could now kick into gear as a developmental agency for the arts, as a maker of policy and strategy which would shape the way the arts developed. This vision for the council, and this plan, were very much Ms Quinn's babies.
Long before her appointment as director in 1996, she made clear her ambition to turn the arts administration sector, which then conducted business largely on an ad hoc, part-time basis, into a bastion of professionalism.
What the Arts Plan confirmed, two years ago, was that income projections and administrative precision were the future of the arts. The objectives spoke of making arts careers a realistic possibility, of broadening participation in, and audiences for, the arts, of raising standards in arts leadership and management, of extending the international impact of Irish arts, and of working with others to bring the arts closer to local communities. Financially, it was a plan which offered rewards to some arts organisations - multi-annual funding was promised to those companies who had proven themselves deserving of the opportunity to plan and programme for up to three years.
But that was in 2002 and, within nine months, the serious cuts delivered by a niggardly Budget had effectively swept the ground from under the Arts Plan's manicured feet. Although it had a spending target of €53.7 million for 2003, the Government granted it only €44 million, 20 per cent below target. In fact, this was 8 per cent less than the €47.7 million provided in 2002.
Sections of the arts community were all but decimated, with cuts ranging from 8 per cent to over 50 per cent; multi-annual agreements were rescinded upon. Ms Quinn found herself facing angry criticism at every turn, while Ms de Valera's successor as Minister for Arts, Mr John O'Donoghue, gained the interest and trust of an arts community with his "open door" policy. The new Arts Act, passed in July of last year, bore hints of Government influence over the policies of the council.
In interviews, Mr O'Donoghue spoke freely of a need to rethink the troubled Arts Plan.
But it was his appointment of an Arts Council comprised almost exclusively of artists and arts workers - some of whom had vocally questioned the policies of the outgoing council - and the implications of a newly restructured Executive, which nailed down the Arts Plan coffin.
Thursday's statement by the chair of the council, Ms Olive Braiden, that the plan will be "set aside" has been expected in the community for some time. That Ms Quinn should resign over that setting aside comes as a surprise.
The truth may be that Ms Quinn has realised that, with her strong belief in arts management, she cannot work with a council which prioritises advocacy over policy, which sees itself as a "conduit" for the artists first, and a strategy-maker for the arts second.
She will have been uncomfortable with the council's wish to "listen" to the arts community and to build its plans around the requests of artists, rather than the other way around.
More specifically, she is resigning in response to the fact that the plan has been set aside with no clear replacement lined up to take its place.
In meetings with the Arts Plan review committee - comprised of five members of the council - the proposal to which Ms Quinn was most open was that of a rewrite of the existing plan, to be followed by a drafting of a replacement.
The interim arrangements before the drafting of a new plan - if that happens - are, at this stage, however, worryingly vague, and must be clarified. Regardless, the die is cast: this council intends to make a mark all its own, and Quinn will not stand by and watch.