Charles Haughey is lauded for bringing in the artists' tax exemption, but he could have done a lot more to improve artists' lot, writes Michael Dervan
The passing of Charles Haughey has led to a predictable polarisation in the assessments and commentaries which have followed. He was a man who seemed to stir people deeply, both for and against. I grew up in a family where he was generally frowned on. But, in spite of their disapproval, my parents were quite happy to give him credit where they felt it was due.
And the exemption of artistic earnings from income tax, introduced in 1969, was definitely felt to be a good thing. In fact, it was more than a good thing. It generated feelings of national pride that a little place like Ireland, and a not particularly well-off place in the 1960s, would introduce such a far-sighted scheme.
The idea has a kind of perfect simplicity about it, and there's no doubting the fact that it has improved artists' lives. Similarly, Aosdána, created in 1981, not only confers artists with a national honour but also provides needy artists with a cnuas, a kind of basic income that's also, naturally, tax-free.
BUT HERE, ALREADY, you can see a kind of paradox. If the income-tax exemption was such a successful scheme, why would we need a national academy to provide our leading artists with a basic income? If our leading artists are so badly off, what must the situation be like for the rest of the artistic community? When Aosdána was introduced I was already writing about music for a living. As my awareness of international comparisons grew, so did my questions about the nature of public funding for the arts in Ireland.
During 1985, which was designated European Music Year, I became aware of the fact that the city of Bonn, with a population of less than 300,000, was spending roughly as much on its opera and ballet theatre as the government was giving to the Arts Council to support all of the arts (and artists) in Ireland.
In 1998 I visited the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra in Norway, in advance of an Irish tour. Stavanger is an eight-hour drive from the capital, Oslo, and has a population of 100,000, making it significantly smaller than Cork. Yet, back in 1998, its orchestra was in receipt of the equivalent of IR£3.57 million. The Norwegian public purse also supported symphony orchestras in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, as well as a smaller radio orchestra in Oslo. The Arts Council's 1998 total spend on music was IR£2 million.
There are similarly striking international comparisons to be made when you look at support structures for artists - commissioning schemes with hefty budgets, stipends which buy time to concentrate on creative work. I've come across them in France and the Netherlands, as well as the Nordic countries. And such stipends are not limited exclusively to the kind of artists supported by Aosdána and the tax exemption.
Performers, an essential link in the chain for playwrights and composers, can be eligible, too. Leading Finnish clarinettist Kari Kriikku, who makes his Irish debut in Belfast next August, was supported for 10 years in this way.
And what, you might ask, has all of this got to do with Charlie Haughey, who, after all, let go of the reins of power a long time ago? Well, the tax exemption for artists was really only what you might call a good start. The Arts Council's annual report for 1969-70, the first after the exemption came into effect, reveals that it was given just £70,000 of state funding to disburse. Even allowing for the effects of inflation, this was a paltry amount.
On another level, the tax exemption was a stroke of PR genius. It carried a very powerful positive message. It made a statement that Ireland valued art, and in particular that Ireland valued artists. However, like much in the world of PR, there was a smoke and mirrors effect. The exemption's very simplicity and uniqueness drew attention away from the fact that, even without the burden of income tax, most creative artists were still not going to be able to make a living from their work. The hardship and privation that continue to be experienced by many artists today are not widely appreciated. And it's often seemed to me that the preferential aspect of the exemption has actually created hurdles for campaigners on behalf of artists and the arts.
AOSDÁNA ALSO BROUGHT immediate and undeniable benefits to those artists who have been in a position to avail of the cnuas, which is currently valued at €12,180 a year. The cnuas is not available to all members of Aosdána. To qualify, you have to devote yourself full-time to your art (ie, no other jobs), and payment is restricted "to those artists whose other earnings, averaged over a three-year period, do not exceed one-and-a-half-times the cnuas". The latest available Aosdána annual report reveals that, in 2004, 119 members of Aosdána, over half the total membership, qualified for a cnuas. In other words, a majority of our national artistic elite had incomes of less than €30,450.
For the non-elite, things are a lot more serious. Arts Council-funded research has revealed that, in 2001, more than 50 per cent of the tax exemption scheme's beneficiaries earned less than €10,000. The artists' tax exemptions and cnuas component of Aosdána are all well and good. But they have not been good enough, as is evidenced by the current situation of the very people they set out to protect.
Haughey was long enough in power to have done something serious about this. He may have left some substantial monuments to his memory, in the restoration of buildings and the creation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. But the still widely-praised tax exemption and Aosdána schemes are like the gestures of a generous tipper in a restaurant. The gifts are welcome but they do not actually right the serious underpayments which they so usefully ameliorate.