What is happening to the Arts Council? Now that three members have resigned in less than a week, the average arts enthusiast, usually bored by the behind-the-scenes organisation of the arts world, is asking what is going on.
Few who work in the arts, however, will be hugely surprised by last week's news. Such trouble was widely predicted even before the Minister for the Arts, Ms Sile de Valera, appointed her council nearly two years ago. When the council was appointed, the predictions grew more dire.
The Minister took office in June 1997, but it was a year before she appointed her council. At that point, there were just six months to go before the council was meant to have its new plan for the arts ready, and internal and external reviews of an earlier plan were in progress. How - particularly with the summer intervening - could the new council formulate policy for the plan?
It couldn't, and the widely-praised new plan was largely the work of the Arts Council director, Patricia Quinn, and the paid staff of the council, with few allowances for the interests of council members.
Some members felt they were being used as a rubber stamp when the plan - six months late - was adopted by the Government last year. They didn't work their problems out behind closed doors, but went straight to this newspaper with their complaints.
The Minister should have foreseen these difficulties, and the blame for the current crisis must surely rest with her.
If she had to appoint the council so late, she should have retained more than two members of the old council, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa, former president of Conradh na Gaeilge, and Paul McGuinness, manager of the rock band U2.
But she apparently wanted to put her stamp on the council. She appointed a council which reflected her areas of concern - the Irish language, disability and the arts in the regions. Concern for how the council would cohere as a policymaking body and how it would bring forward Arts Council policies that were already formulated seemed to take second place.
This had the result of splitting the council. The three members who have resigned - the chairman, Brian Farrell, Mr McGuinness and Ms Jane Gogan, commissioning editor at TV3 - all cited pressure of work as the reason.
They are speaking no less than the truth. What they are not saying, however, is that the Arts Council is not functioning efficiently. There were 90 meetings involving council members last year, which makes it difficult for anyone with a paying job to stay on the council.
These problems relate, in my view, to errors of judgment on the part of the Minister. In fairness to her, some of her greatest successes are also contributing to the tension. When she came into office, Arts Council funding stood at roughly £21 million and the first arts plan had been rescheduled by her predecessor, Michael D. Higgins, to run over five years instead of three.
De Valera made an election promise to bring in the required £26 million a year earlier and she delivered. Since then, the second arts plan has been adopted by the Government, which will see the Arts Council's budget rise to £37.5 million a year by 2001.
She has built on the success of Michael D. Higgins, under whose ministry the fortunes of the arts sector in Ireland were literally transformed. He doubled Arts Council funding and commissioned the first arts plan (the first real coherent policy for the sector), commandeered EU structural funds for a wide range of new venues and re-established the Film Board.
Around this new funding, a new culture of strategic planning for the arts has rightly grown up, of which the Arts Council must stay abreast. A council appointed all at once, particularly if it includes members who don't work in the arts, will inevitably be unable for some time to speak the language which is now used in Merrion Square.
The last Arts Council, appointed by Mr Higgins and under the chairmanship of Dr Ciaran Benson, was governed by the same creaking Arts Act, last amended in 1973. Nearly all the members were appointed together and the political concerns of the Fianna Fail/Labour coalition were obvious in its make-up.
It was still highly effective, however, because it was born under very propitious circumstances. Its appointment largely coincided with the provision of the first serious funding for the arts in Ireland, so it was able to develop as policies developed. The Minister also took advice on his appointments from his cultural adviser, Colm O Briain, who had been director of the Arts Council, and possibly from the chairman, Dr Benson, who had also been an Arts Council staff member.
Its policies were underpinned by what has been described by a member of that council as a "governing idea": a concept of the artist's role, his or her relationship with the people and the council's relationship with both. Dr Benson was praised at his appointment by Colm O Briain for having "set out a philosophy of the arts" and this helped the council to cohere.
Interestingly, Brian Farrell told The Irish Times on the day he was appointed: "I wouldn't pretend to offer anything as pretentious as a philosophy of the arts." And he added that the strategies he would like to implement would be in the areas of priority identified by the Minister.
The conditions which attended the birth of Dr Benson's council will not occur again. Instead of leaving matters to chance, the Arts Act, which governs the setting up of the council, should be the architect of successful councils.
To her credit, Ms de Valera signalled her intention last year to reform it. A rolling council, from which members depart and are appointed one by one, would be an obvious improvement if arts policies are to be carried forward smoothly.
The council, with 17 members, is also too big - or, as one member of the present council put it, "too big to be effective and too small to be representative". It could be made more representative of what is now an organised and articulate arts sector if a series of panels representing different genres were put in place to report formally to the council, as happens in Australia and in Scotland.
These changes would place more stress on the salaried officials of the council. As things stand, they are understaffed and underpaid, to the extent that there were hardly any applicants for the recently advertised post of drama officer. If officials had the structures to function well, the board would be freed from doing legwork which a voluntary board should not have to do - a point made in Paul McGuinness' letter of resignation.
By beefing up the executive and seeing through radical reform of the Arts Act, the Minister could go some way towards rubbing out the blot which is all too visible on her copybook. She needs to act fast.