JOHN STEPHENSON,
Madam, - In my capacity as stated below, I have established that the Gate Theatre was not the only arts organisation to receive a letter from the Arts Council of Ireland implying that financial aid was conditional upon clearing artistic programmes in advance with the council's staff (The Irish Times, December 21st).
Yet I have scanned your pages in vain for a single letter protesting at this highly questionable undermining of the arm's-length principle in arts funding. The Gate's director, Michael Colgan, should be supported for not being so cowed and compromised as to fear to stand up and be counted.
To me the issue is not only that Arts Council money should be applicable only to "new or unpopular work", but that the Council should set its staff up as commissars alongside artistic directors in the volatile formulation and delivery of artistic programmes. That's not their job.
In a period of financial disappointment and difficulty, the achievement of the current Arts Plan, set back by €10 million in 2003, will require imagination and motivation from the statutory body responsible for developing the arts in Ireland. The Arts Council has no choice in 2003 but to implement financial cuts and yet simultaneously encourage its clients to shift their expenditure of diminished grant-aid to the priorities of the plan. Communication remains a problem for the administrators of public policy, and communicating a reduction in essential State financial support need not be a ham-fisted exercise in alienation.
Mr Colgan is quite right to tell the Arts Council to back off and back down. But the Arts Council is equally right to expect the €600,000 of public money it gives to the Gate to be spent on meeting the requirements of Article 3 of the defining Arts Act 1951, and also on "increasing audiences for a theatre of high quality and artistic ambition" and "extending the international impact and success of Irish arts and artists" as required by the current Arts Plan.
Does the Council have any reason to believe the Gate is not spending taxpayers' money on the above? If so, may we see it in the public domain to inform the debate? Is it possible even to have a debate when everyone fears to speak? - Yours, etc.,
JOHN STEPHENSON,
Stage Editor,
The Dubliner Magazine,
Wicklow Street,
Dublin 2.