Can the Arts survive An Bord Snip?

If An Bord Snip Nua has its way, funding of the arts in Ireland will be dramatically reduced after the next budget. So who’s going to suffer if the cuts go ahead? And is there a case for maintaining current levels of investment in the arts when the economy is in crisis? Those at the heart of the action in the creative industries certainly believe that there is.

An Bord Snip (aka the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes) is headed up by UCD economist Colm McCarthy. The McCarthy Report, published on July 16, sets out a menu of €5.3 billion in cuts to plug Ireland’s cavernous budget deficit. An Taoiseach Brian Cowen has stated that nothing in the McCarthy Report can be ruled out – even the proposed 5% social welfare cut, which has outraged many. Neither, however, is anything in the report decided or agreed on. It is, as they say, all to play for.
Overall, the report is shockingly negative in its approach to the Arts and culture. In a recommendation that smacks of a deep seated contempt for the arts, McCarthy reckons that the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism is dispensible and recommends that it be wound up, with responsibility for the arts moving to the Department of An Taoiseach. “Given the extensive savings that are possible,” the report claims, “the rationale for a separate Department to administer programmes, which mainly involve allocations to national bodies and institutions, is significantly diminished.” In addition the report recommends the scrapping of the Irish Film Board – a move that would almost certainly have a catastrophic effect on the film industry here.
Understandably, the report has been greeted with horror by the arts community, with Garry Hynes of the Druid Theatre Company describing its proposals as heralding “a time of great peril for the arts.” The Film Board was the first agency to come out, guns blazing, against An Bord Snip. In a statement, the Film Board argued that the McCarthy recommendations could have “substantial and unanticipated negative economic consequences”.
Now, Pat Moylan, Chairwoman of the Arts Council, has entered the debate, telling Hot Press that this would be a “retrograde step for Ireland.”
“I see no recommendation in the Special Group [McCarthy] Report that the ICT sector wouldn’t have a Department of Communications or a Minister for Communications, and rightly so,” says Moylan. “The same logic should also be applied to the Arts.”
The department has already been the victim of significant cuts: the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism has an expenditure allocation of €540.4 million this year, down 24% on the 2008 figure (€708.1 million). An Bord Snip proposes a further savage cut of 19.4%, amounting to €104.8 million. Of that figure, €21 million would be taken from ‘arts and culture’, with a further €300,000 from the National Gallery. McCarthy has specifically targeted the €5.3 million departmental fund earmarked for Cultural Projects, as well as Culture Ireland, the state agency, staffed by Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism officials, which is tasked with promoting Irish arts and culture abroad and which facilitates Irish participation at various international arts events. An Bord Snip claims that this “cannot be sustained, given other public expenditure priorities”.
A spokesman for the Department disagrees, emphasising that the Department will be making a strong case for retaining all of the cultural activities and institutions that are under attack. “The ‘Cultural Projects’ fund is for all the museums and galleries that are not national cultural institutions,” the spokesman explained. Among the institutions funded are Marsh’s Library, the Hunt Museum in Limerick, the National Print Museum and the Irish Manuscripts Commission.
The publicity currently surrounding the expenses incurred by the former Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, John O’Donoghue, who established Culture Ireland in 2005 as a national agency to promote Irish arts overseas, could hardly have come at a worse time. There has been a hullabaloo in certain quarters of the media about the fact that it cost €5,834 in hotel bills for O’Donoghue, his wife and his personal secretary on a four-night trip to the Venice Biennale, while the cost of car hire in Cannes was €9,616.
The Arts, Sports and Tourism spokesman was trenchant in dismissing the media hype. “We’ve got to be represented [abroad] at Ministerial level,” said the spokesman, arguing that Culture Ireland’s marketing of Ireland overseas is essential. “Inward investment doesn’t happen by chance, it doesn’t fall out of the clear blue sky. As Minister, that was his job. When the Minister went to Cannes he signed six different production contracts. Filmmakers don’t come here because they think ‘oh, wouldn’t it be great to film on the old green sod’. Shillelaghs and leprechauns don’t cut it any more.”
As it happens, the Irish film industry is the arts sector that will take the biggest hit if the government takes the McCarthy recommendations on board. The Report says An Board Scannán/The Irish Film Board’s investment fund should be withdrawn and its overall functions transferred to an expanded Enterprise Ireland agency.
The McCarthy Report argues that there’s no “objective economic case” for subventing the Irish film industry – the tax incentives that attract filmmakers to Ireland mean that government coffers aren’t getting much direct return from the sector. An Bord Snip believes that film development is no different to other forms of enterprise – say, the manufacturing or service sectors – and so concludes that Enterprise Ireland should be perfectly able to pick up where the Irish Film Board leaves off.
There is a widespread view within the arts community that McCarthy simply does not understand what is at stake. A spokeswoman for the Irish Film Board made that much clear. “The removal of the Irish Film Board funding, 90% of which is invested directly into the industry, will have a huge effect of the ability of this sector to survive and grow in Ireland,” she said. “This should be of particular concern to the hundreds of young students coming out of third level with qualifications in media, communications and connected information and communications technology qualifications, as jobs in this sector will be hit massively.”
The Film Board is making the case that withdrawing investment from the creative industries will have a ripple effect on the wider economy. If Ireland becomes “the only developed country in the world producing no films for the cinema”, the spokeswoman added, it will lose “the most powerful tool available for establishing and sustaining its cultural identity abroad.” The Film Board argues that the ‘creative industries’ are a “key driver of the digital and knowledge economy,” and says the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism are 100% behind them on this issue.
A Department spokesman confirmed this. “The film and creative industries employ 7,000 people,” he explained. “The film board is an essential part of our infrastructure. We’ll continue to put that point across to government.”
Culture Ireland will be making the same case. “Ireland is one of only a handful of countries with an immediately recognisable and distinctive global cultural brand,” the agency told Hot Press. “In the current crisis, this global cultural brand is a unique asset in renewing Ireland’s international reputation and securing our future prosperity.”
Pat Moylan similarly argues that, at a time when Ireland’s ‘brand’ is suffering, the arts are one of the areas in which we can present ourselves as world class.
“In my view, the arts could be used as a key way to regain prestige and reputation for Ireland after a period in which that has been severely damaged,” says Moylan.
“At home, as well as creating a society where people are happy to live, our national pride and self-esteem can also be enhanced at this time through the arts.”
The uniform feeling among those involved in the arts is that An Bord Snip has failed to understand the wider implications of decimating the arts industry. In the words of one Arts Council source: “They (An Bord Snip) see the arts as a luxury – we’re not a society just an economy.”