Madam, – I was sorry to see that a recent column I wrote about arts funding for RTÉ Radio One's Drivetimeprogramme was perceived by your radio critic to be "an infomercial" (Weekend Review, October 24th). My aim was to give a sense of some of the numerous ways in which the Arts Council supplies invaluable help to writers and artists, not to provide an advertisement for my books. But I felt that one small way in which I could acknowledge the work of the council was to give some examples from my own life as a writer. I should perhaps have put things differently and written the piece in general terms, saying the council supports literary festivals, Irish publishing, Irish theatre, Irish cinema, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, traditional music, the visual arts, the translation of Irish literature and hundreds of other cultural activities, but it seemed to me that my piece might be more interesting and reflective of realities if I related it to the specifics of how I received help when I was starting out myself.
I sometimes think that much of the most effective work done by the Arts Council goes unseen. And like everyone else working in the arts in Ireland at the moment, I am worried that the fruitful and reasonable system of support for emerging writers and artists, built up carefully over many years, might be dismantled because of the real difficulties we face. It would be a shame if this were allowed to happen, when Ireland continues to produce writers of the calibre of, say, Colum McCann (shortlisted recently for America’s most important literary prize, the National Book Award). My piece was simply an attempt to place on record my sincere belief that arts funding brings continuing and tangible benefits to the country.
I am teaching this autumn at a university in New York. I find the Ireland in which my students are most interested is the country of Roddy Doyle and Marina Carr, Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry, Conor McPherson, Colm Tóibín and Claire Keegan, not the island of child-abusers, pin-striped thieves and cynical shysters whose images haunt the media every day. No doubt I should have said this more simply and directly in my piece for the radio, that we are internationally perceived to be world-leaders when it comes to the arts. In a time when Ireland’s reputation has been gravely damaged everywhere, I think we should value the things we do best, and build on them. – Yours, etc,