313 organisations to receive €55m from Arts Council

Some 313 arts organisations will receive €55 million from the Arts Council in 2007, a Dáil committee was told yesterday.

Speaking at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sports and Tourism, Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, said the council increased its support to arts organisations by 8 per cent on 2006, following "significantly increased" Exchequer funding.

However, she said annual funding to the council needed to reach €100 million next year.

"We are still considerably shy of that amount in annual funding and I hope the gap can be bridged by 2008 to ensure that we can support projects, organisations and touring, to ensure that the light the arts can shine on people's lives glows across the country," she said.

She told the committee they would soon be considering a report on education and the arts, which she hoped would be published in May and would bring significant changes once it was formally accepted.

Ms Braiden said consideration should be given to having arts broadcasting as a requirement for all electronic media.

She welcomed the appointment of an arts correspondent for RTÉ and said she hoped the correspondent would be given the air time "she and the arts deserve".

She also said she was hopeful that tax exemptions for choreographers and screen directors would be included in the next Finance Bill.

Director of the Arts Council Mary Cloake said concerts, exhibitions and shows generated locally need to travel, and the council would be supporting eight groups in the coming year to travel with their work.

"This will help to redress some of the geographical imbalances that have been there for arts audiences," she said.

Novelist Colm Tóibín told the committee that putting a monetary value on the results of Exchequer funding to the Arts Council was impossible. But it had an enormous spiritual value, he said, and it "entered the soul of Ireland".

He also said it enhanced Ireland's image abroad.

Former arts minister Michael D Higgins, who sat in on yesterday's meeting, raised his concerns about pensions for artists, whose income, he said, was totally unsatisfactory.

"I tried to discuss constructing a pension scheme for artists with the late Charles Haughey - he said: 'Why draw them on yourself, Michael? Look at all I did for them and the thanks I got for it'," Mr Higgins said.