The Department of Arts and Heritage has revealed that a proposal to build a £35 million national academy for the performing arts is to be put to the Cabinet shortly. On the face of it, this looks like a good-news story.

There is at the moment no national academy of music, dance or drama. The need is clearly there, and it is great. And it looks as if a solution is about to be offered.

Yet the response from those who will be most immediately affected by the development has been cautious, even suspicious. The reason for that isn't hard to divine.

Only the broadest outline has been offered of what the new academy will involve, and, historically, the treatment of the performing arts within the Irish education system has not been confidence-inspiring. With respect to music, the very decision to establish a national academy is itself not confidence-inspiring, paradoxical as this may seem.

The academy will be a third-level institution, offering professional training and setting standards for national qualifications. This replicates the style of institution to be found in most other European countries, which have one or more conservatories or academies to deal with the professional training of musicians. Ireland, it would seem, is about to make another step to align itself with European norms.

But those European norms also include musical training at earlier stages in the educational system - both at the special level needed by youngsters who are likely to have the option of becoming professionals, and at the less intensive level needed by everyone else.

It's no accident that two of the three permanent, professional orchestras in this State are led by violinists from Northern Ireland. Or that the Irish musicians with the highest international profiles - James Galway and Barry Douglas - are both from Belfast.

Anyone growing up in Northern Ireland has the benefit of access to music education from an early age. And I'm not just talking about music in the classroom, but instrumental tuition, too, with account taken of providing the instruments that are needed.

The Northern Ireland model delivers music education across the spectrum of wealth and social background. In the Republic, music is not generally available in the classroom at either primary or secondary level. There is no national system to deliver instrumental tuition in schools.

So the idea of a national academy of music is a bit like an academy for English literature in a country where the bulk of the people have never been taught to read or write. In that sense, the proposed academy is a serious deviation from the European norm, which involves providing more general and less elitist access.

The Northern Ireland model isn't the only viable way forward. Norway, a country with a population of 4.2 million, has over 350 music schools. And it has higher institutions too.

The reality seems to be that Irish politicians are not yet ready to grasp the major issues surrounding music education: that only the children of committed parents who can afford it are likely to have access, and that for anyone living away from a major population centre, the situation is pretty hopeless.

But the fact that the new academy will actually tackle the problem from the wrong end doesn't mean that it won't be welcome. The academy initiative as we know it today has been driven with relentless energy, enthusiasm and commitment by John O'Conor, who, as well as being a well-known pianist, is the director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM).

Putting the academy on the Cabinet's agenda, even if it's not in the form he personally wished (his preferred site was Earlsfort Terrace rather than Dublin City University) has to be O'Conor's crowning glory.

When the new academy opens, the Department of Arts and Heritage has revealed, the music degree courses of the RIAM will transfer there.

The implications of this are by no means clear. Will the RIAM simply drop its third-level activities when the new institution opens? Or will the staff currently teaching the third-level courses be transferred north of the Liffey?

What will all this mean for the DIT Conservatory of Music and its third-level courses? DIT has more than twice as many third-level music students as the RIAM. And its track record in producing professional musicians still puts the RIAM in the shade. After all, it was there that John O'Conor himself was trained.

There are those who believe that the new academy will simply absorb in some way the staff and structures of the RIAM, that a new building at DCU will serve to house a smartened-up version of the RIAM third level as it exists at present. What is really needed is for the new academy to be independently constituted.

Its position vis-a-vis all the existing third-level music courses needs clarification. The post of director needs to be filled by open, international competition. And that's how the faculty needs to be hired, too.

It's by no means clear that the new academy will meet the real demands in the world of music, let alone the other performing arts. As things stand, the Department of Arts and Heritage's revelations leave everyone with more questions than answers.

Michael Dervan is Music Critic of The Irish Times