Sir, - Recent reports in your newspaper, by Medb Ruane and Victoria White respectively, regarding the appointment of new members to the Arts Council have contained a number of inaccuracies which I wish to take this opportunity to correct.
Firstly, it is incorrect to say that Minister de Valera has "dropped the practice of appointing a civil servant member to the Arts Council", just as it is incorrect to say that Michael D Higgins had reintroduced such a practice. Rather, Michael D Higgins appointed an official from his department to attend Arts Council meetings in an observer capacity and Minister de Valera has retained this practice, which is a common one in the public sector.
One report refers to the Arts Council as being "managed" by its board members. As is the case with all state agencies with a non-executive board, the Arts Council is managed by an executive staff (numbering 28), led by a chief executive. Again, as is the case in other agencies, the Government-appointed members of the board are responsible for policy formulation and the executive staff are responsible for its implementation.
Having posed some serious questions about the capacity of the newly-appointed Council to assimilate some of the important and complex questions which will be confronted in the preparation of another arts plan, your reporters fail to mention that a statement, issued after the first full plenary meeting of the Council on June 20th, stated that, given the programme of work in hand, two further plenary meetings will be held before the end of August.
Finally, a report of last week's Arts Council forum in Limerick suggests that only Arts Council staff were present to hear the views of the delegates: in fact seven of the 17 newly-appointed Council members were among the 315 delegates (not 200 as reported), as indeed were representatives from a range of other governmental and non-governmental bodies, and a senior official from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. - Yours, etc., Mary Hyland, Communications Officer, The Arts Council,
Merrion Square,
Dublin 2.