Why are people who work in the arts not shouting more about fundingdecisions? asks Deirdre Falvey, Arts Editor.
'At what point is the arts community going to decide that we need to come together and take a stand about the direction that Arts Council policy is heading?" The irony that the person making the comment (whose organisation's funding has been cut, though not severely) was not prepared to be identified was not lost on her.
Where is the arts world's tractorcade on the Dáil; where is its John Dillon?
The arts sector may not be health or farming in terms of national importance, but it represents a tiny proportion of Government expenditure and expenditure which adds significantly to our quality of life, the gaiety of the nation, the profile of Ireland abroad - and is extremely good value for the investment in it, even without being compared, say, to the inefficiencies of health spending.
Yet people and organisations who work in the arts are mostly unpoliticised and unorganised, and almost silent in reaction to the Government cut which led to the Arts Council's slash and burn. There is a climate of silence and fear; a culture of dependency.
Ironically, some of this is a result of the system of State support, where a fear of loss of funding seems to prevent people from sticking a head above the parapet. A cut of €4 million is a drop in the ocean in terms of State finances. Yet, combined with the economic downturn and reductions in other sources of funding, it will lead to many, many actors, musicians, visual artists and dancers (not so many arts administrators, mind) losing work.
And this in an area which is notoriously badly paid and insecure to start with. A number of arts organisations will probably cease to exist, and theatres, arts centres and galleries will have less going on.
That's less to lift the lives - to entertain, educate, elucidate, amuse - of the rest of us.
It's not the Arts Council's fault that the economy has started to crumble at the edges, or that its budget was cut by the Government. Nor, indeed, that the arts portfolio is now shared with the unlikely bedfellows of sport and tourism.
And the council is to be commended for bravery in opting not to shave an even 8 per cent all round from everyone. Indeed, it may have used its budget cut - which is actually €9 million less than the projected €53 million for 2003, and that on a low level of State funding of the arts by international standards - as cover to take some hard decisions to drastically reduce funding for bodies it deemed unworthy.
Matters of judgement and quality are essential to Arts Council decisions. But there seems to have been a failure by the council to make the reason for many of those decisions clear, as Arminta Wallace points out in the arts page today.
The rationale for funding is given in various areas on its website, but it is necessarily general and unnecessarily waffly.
Many of those who have been cut say they are mystified about why, and some of those who have been hit most severely say they are still in the dark about why they have been singled out when others have had increases or got funding for the first time.
While many privately agree with the odd harsh cut as being deserved, the arts sector is at a loss to understand a large number of the funding decisions, which to their peers appear to have little justification.
And many of those funded by the council fear it is becoming too prescriptive - that it is not responsive enough to the way organisations grow or how art is created.
The Arts Council has encouraged and rewarded professionalism; those who are on multi-annual funding were encouraged to plan for three years (and had to jump through hoops to get that status) and streamline their organisations, and in return they would have a degree of stability.
Now, with the council reneging on funding commitments to some of these organisations - yes, there was small print in the contracts, but what's the point of a commitment if doesn't mean anything? - there is a question of trust at issue. And it leaves the much-vaunted, multi-annual funding scheme in a shambles.
A letter to the editor in last Thursday's paper suggested that a number of companies (without naming them) received letters from the Arts Council "implying that financial aid was conditional upon clearing artistic programmes in advance with the council's staff".
Recipients of letters such as these are mostly unwilling to talk publicly about them - though Michael Colgan went on the record before Christmas about the letter The Gate received which said the council would "be happy to agree the schedule of artistic programming for which the council's grant is offered, when the board has had the opportunity to review planned activity for the year in light of the actual funding offered".
The council points out that it has no intention of interfering with artistic programming, but clearly there are aspects of The Gate's - and possibly others' - programmes that they are unwilling to support.
This has been a period of change for the council, and it is no longer primarily a funding body but a "development agency".
And if it is a development agency, those letters look like a step further in that direction, whether people like it or not.
We have yet to see if this means the council will function similarly to, say, Enterprise Ireland, or almost as an arm of government rather than as advocate or champion of the arts sector.
Being a development agency implies a level of partnership with arts organisations, which involves give and take, an exchange, which is not how some would characterise their present relationship with the council.
It also means a different relationship with the Government, and perhaps a change in the "arms length" policy that has existed up to now.
That issue, and the question of political involvement in arts decisions, also comes up in the Arts Bill, which is going through the Dáil.
And that too, surprisingly, has generated little uproar among artists.