The Stage

Quinn quits Irish Arts Council after policy quarrel

Published Friday 19 March 2004 at 12:05

Irish Arts Council director Patricia Quinn has controversially announced her resignation, following a policy dispute with members of the recently appointed council.

The breaking point came with the council’s decision to abandon a five-year plan for the arts that had been agreed by its predecessor and the government in 2002. Quinn, a full-time director of the council since 1996, had played a key role in shaping the strategy and in winning government support for it.

In her resignation letter, she said she felt honour bound to step down, given that “the council’s precipitate action overturns government policy and is contrary to the considered advice of its own executive”.

At the heart of the controversy lay a wider dispute about the role of the Arts Council. As part of the five-year strategy, Quinn had aimed to transform the organisation into a development agency for the arts, which would set targets and dictate policy, rather than operate just as a funding body.

But such an approach attracted considerable criticism - some of it, ironically, from artists and arts workers who have since been appointed to the new council.

A 20% reduction in the arts council grant in 2003 made matters worse, leading to widespread cuts across the arts community. Although the state grant was significantly increased in this year’s budget, the current council decided that funding targets under the arts plan could not now be met and that the plan should be abandoned rather than being revised, as the director was suggesting.

The council chairwoman Olive Braiden acknowledged “the genuine strength of opinion” that had caused Quinn to resign and expressed regret at her departure. Theatre critic and council member Emer O’Kelly said she was “very surprised” at the resignation and added: “I think she is an extraordinarily able person with a passion for the arts.”

During her term, Quinn had some highly-publicised clashes over funding with Dublin’s Gate Theatre director Michael Colgan.

Said Colgan: “I admire her integrity for sticking with the arts plan but I’m not upset to see the back of it. There were times when Patricia or previous councils sailed very close to the wind in bringing a development agency towards artistic interference. A lot of people in my position, funded through the Arts Council, were finding it very bureaucratic.”