PATRICIA QUINN,
Madam, - Brian Prior (November 29th) is wrong to perpetuate the false claim that the Arts Council dismisses or discounts the value of Irish traditional arts.
In July 2000, Ms Síle de Valera TD (then Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands) published a discussion document in which she asked: Is there merit in the idea of establishing a traditional arts council to support and co-ordinate the development needs of the traditional arts sector?
The Arts Council's response, dated October 2000 and published then on our website, answered: "No. The Council believes that the contemporary elements of traditional arts are included properly within the Council's remit. On this basis they are treated equally as mainstream elements of contemporary arts practice in Ireland."
The Arts Council has never pretended to offer support to every manifestation of the Irish traditional arts. Responsibility for the musical education of children or the training of teachers, for example, rests with the Department of Education and Science. Subsidy for a range of traditional arts activities is provided by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, including (so we have been assured) an annual grant of about €0.5 million to Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann for the totality of its operations, as well as substantial grants to Iomairt Cholm Cille, Féile Pan Cheilteach and others. Incidentally, the Arts Council is not the sole source of public support for contemporary or classical music either: RTÉ sustains two orchestras and a string quartet.
This is why simple statistics about traditional arts - such as the putative 1 per cent of its budget spent by the Arts Council repeatedly (and inaccurately) quoted by Mr Prior and others - are so unreliable. The fact is that 32 per cent of our funding goes to venues for the arts, 8 per cent to festivals of all kinds around the country, and 5 per cent to the arts programmes of local authorities. Many of these incorporate traditional arts into their activities, although we do not currently measure the precise extent of this, nor do we impose a quota of any kind on their programming.
Mr Prior is also mistaken in citing PriceWaterhouseCoopers as arbiters in this debate. They have offered neither "findings" nor "conclusions". Their role in the consultative process was simply to facilitate and document a meeting whose agenda and attendance were set by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands.
I write to correct the record on behalf of and with the full authority of the Arts Council, as did my colleague Dermot McLaughlin last week. From the outset, the Arts Council has welcomed the process of legislative reform and encouraged the public to participate actively in the consultative processes convened by the Minister, as we have done ourselves. In the interests of transparency, we published (on www.artscouncil.ie) both our original submission, and our response to the publication of the Bill earlier this year. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICIA QUINN, Director, The Arts Council, Merrion Square,Dublin 2.