Madam, - The painter Robert Ballagh (Arts, April 11th) raises sharp questions about the malaise in the cultural sector. After years of massive public investment in the arts, can some small cuts in expenditure really produce the state of "despondency, frustration, fear" he so graphically describes?
We hear a lot in the media about bloated bureaucracy in the health sector. Could the growth in recent decades of a huge tribe of cultural administrators and apparatchiks, a veritable artocracy, have anything to do with the allocation of resources away from the artist?
The malaise will not be resolved by throwing more money at the arts sector. The question should be not how much, but how we spend it. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK QUIGLEY, Coolmine Court, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15.
Madam, - In claiming that Arts Council decisions lack proper Oireachtas scrutiny, Robert Ballagh says: "Nor has the Public Accounts Committee ever questioned the Arts Council about the disbursement of public money."
This is simply untrue. The Arts Council appears every year before the Public Accounts Committee, following the publication of its annual report, which, as required by statute, is laid before the two Houses of the Oireachtas.
On a number of occasions in recent years, the chairman and the director of the council have also appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
From a wider perspective of accountability, the Council's recent practice of operating under a carefully prepared and published Arts Plan offers a fully transparent process both to the tax-paying public and to arts practitioners. - Yours, etc.,
MICHELLE HOCTOR, Press and Communications Officer, The Arts Council, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.