The Stage

Irish Arts Council state grant rises 11%

Published Monday 27 November 2006 at 13:50 by Anthony Garvey

The Irish Arts Council will have more money to spend next year, with an 11% increase in its state grant, the fourth successive year its funding has been improved.

According to the spending estimates for 2007, just published by finance minister Brian Cowen, the council is to receive €80 million next year compared with its current grant of €72.1 million. With the general increase in government spending for the year set at 7%, the 11% hike is seen as generous and a testimony to the effectiveness of behind the scenes lobbying by arts minister John O’Donoghue.

Arts council chairwoman Olive Braiden, welcoming the increase, described it as “a major vote of confidence in the arts community and a recognition of the important contribution which the arts make to our society”.

Overall, state support for the Irish arts next year will total €216.5 million, an increase of almost 9%. This includes a grant of almost €20 million for the Irish Film Board, a rise of 15%, and board chairman James Morris praised “the consistent and continuing support” that O’Donoghue had shown the industry.

In the state funding share-out, Culture Ireland, a body set up two years ago to promote the Irish arts overseas, is to have its grant increased by 50% to €4.5 million. An increase of almost 10% has also been announced for a range of national cultural institutions, including the National Concert Hall and National Library.

Meanwhile, the Abbey Theatre has announced that Enda Walsh is to become its writer in association for the next year under a €15,000 bursary funded by Anglo Irish Bank.

Walsh, currently based in London, succeeds previous bursary holder Conor McPherson. His plays include Disco Pigs, Bedbound and The Walworth Farce, and the Abbey is hoping that it will have first refusal on some future work. Walsh is currently working on an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, to be staged by Theatre O at the Barbican next year, and is also adapting his play, Chat Room, for Film Four. Next year also, he is due to direct another of his plays, The New Electric Ballroom, for the Druid Theatre company, so the Abbey may have to wait some time for a new production.