The Arts Council has announced ambitious plans to implement a new three-year initiative for the traditional arts. It plans to allocate a total of €3 million to the traditional arts for 2006, which represents a four-fold increase on the €647,000 allocated in 2005.
According to the council's press officer, Michelle Hoctor, "the aims of the initiative are to empower the traditional arts community to develop and sustain its activities, as well as the investment of significant funding and a new level of engagement with the community by the Arts Council."
The announcement follows on from the report of the Special Committee on the Traditional Arts that funding be increased sufficiently to ensure that the traditional arts would become one of the top four art forms funded by the Arts Council.
The current traditional arts funding level of €647,000 provided by the Arts Council represents 1.5 per cent of its overall budget.
Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, said the council "wants to integrate the traditional arts into the central structures, systems and philosophy of the Arts Council's activities in ways that are fully cognisant of the integrity and dynamics of the traditional arts."
In a separate development, Minister for the Arts John O'Donoghue has committed a capital grant of €500,000 for Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann's "development of facilities", according to documentation released to The Irish Times under the Freedom Of Information Act.
This grant represents funds which were transferred from the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs by Minister Eamon Ó Cuív, following representations made by the director general of comhaltas, Fianna Fáil Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last October.
The decision by Mr O'Donoghue to bypass the Arts Council, the more usual conduit for traditional arts funding, has taken the Arts Council by surprise, and might have been seen as a challenge to the credibility of the special committee's report, had the Arts Council not made the funding commitment of €3 million announced yesterday.
Yesterday, Mary Cloake, director of the Arts Council, did not wish to comment on Mr O'Donoghue's decision as she was unaware of it prior to being contacted by The Irish Times.
In light of recent speculation regarding the appropriateness of direct ministerial funding being provided for our National theatre, this latest decision by Mr O'Donoghue is likely to be of considerable interest to all arts practitioners, and not just those in the traditional arts sector.
Asked why his department chose to disburse funding to comhaltas via the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr Ó Cuív said "it was decided that the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism would be the most appropriate department to disburse the funds".
Mr Ó Murchú was unwilling to comment on the €500,000 grant allocation, stating that comhaltas would be formally announcing this funding on June 11th next.
