The Stage

Irish arts world escapes with 5% cut

Published Thursday 9 December 2010 at 13:36 by Anthony Garvey

A 5% cut in Irish Arts Council funding for next year, announced by finance minister Brian Lenihan in this week’s budget, has been welcomed with relief by the country’s arts community.

The sector had expected that the cuts would be much deeper, given that the budget had been billed – and was – the toughest in Irish history.

A total of €6 billion in spending was taken out of the Irish economy, part of the price to be paid for the recently negotiated bail-out by the IMF and the EU, but the Arts Council escaped lightly, with its annual funding reduced from €68.6 million to €65.1 million.

“We’re greatly relieved,” said Tania Banotti, chief executive of Irish Theatre Forum and the prime mover behind the National Campaign for the Arts. “In fact, we’ve suffered much less than the recent arts spending cutbacks in the UK, even though the economy there is not in such dire straits.”

As well as sparing the spending axe, minister Lenihan also provided additional funding, giving “a significant increase” to Culture Ireland, which promotes Irish arts abroad and will be involved in a number of events in the US in the coming year.

Banotti, who won a special award for her role last year in the arts campaign, is convinced that “an unprecedented effort” this time led to a better-than-expected outcome. “Unlike the UK,” she says, “our politicians listened when we spoke to them about the importance of the arts and how they can contribute to economic recovery.”

According to the campaign, there were face-to-face meetings with some 85 members of the Irish parliament, plus presentations to parliamentary committes and local councillors. Some 12,000 lobbying emails were sent to politicians by members of the public and those involved in the arts.

The campaign acknowledges that arts funding, which was cut by 6% this year, will be down again in 2011, with an inevitable impact on artists and organisations. But it adds: “We made our case and the cuts at national level are nothing like as bad as we had feared.”