Heading for a cultural desert

The artist Robert Ballagh recently declared that the Government was one of the worst for the arts in the history of the State. The evidence that is stacking up suggests he is right. There has been no shortage of political blather about the value of the arts, and their role in enhancing our international prestige, but every political action relating to culture has been to the detriment of the sector.

The Arts Council, the main funder of the arts in Ireland, has had almost €10 million wiped off its Exchequer allocation since the coalition of fine Gael and the Labour Party came into power (more shockingly, its resources are down by €25 million in a six year period ); funding for Culture Ireland has been severely cut, as well as the undermining of its autonomy; our national cultural institutions have been subjected to damaging reforms, with ill-judged rationalisation as the excuse.

As if that was not enough, the Department has been linked to initiatives that have been mired in controversy – the Dublin Contemporary art exhibition (and where is the audit of its success or failure?), the opera company saga and, more recently, the Limerick City of Culture debacle. Heritage bodies are now barely capable of carrying out their function of preserving the past.

When it comes to the need for cuts, our dire economic situation is cited as the reason. But the baseline investment in the arts never reached adequate levels, though in economic and reputational terms, the investment is “repaid many times over”, as the minister acknowledged after he took up office.

When Fine Gael promised that "cultural discussion would be driven up the agenda", we had no inkling that what that meant was the harnessing of the arts as a branding exercise. Since the Farmleigh economic forum, cultural tourism and a fixation on philanthropy appear to be the main strands of a rather derelict policy and the impetus behind arbitrary decision-making; other than that government seems to be showing scant regard for the arts. So much discussion of recent years has been about this country as "an economy", rather than a nation or even a society, it might well be that the arts do not fit comfortably into that mode of thought.

As we embark on a period of national commemoration in this decade of centenaries, artists have a key role in interrogating those momentous events in our history, as well as imagining and articulating a new vision of Ireland. Former chairwoman of the Arts Council, Pat Moylan, in an interview in this newspaper this week, said that if we don't nourish the soil, "we could end up with a desert in years to come". For the Government not to heed that warning would be to dishonour those they plan to commemorate, several of whom were true believers in cultural vitality.