On top of the moon

When I ask Patrick Murphy, the brand-new chairman of the Arts Council, what gave him his love of the arts, he tells me it was his love of the countryside, growing up in Co Wexford: "Out at dawn for duck shooting, out at dusk for duck shooting, or the mist on the mountain when we went out for the grouse."

It's enough to put any decent duck off the arts for life. More seriously, it is a neat metaphor for Pat Murphy's primary life interest in the arts: collecting visual art. Nano Reids, Sean Mac Sweeneys, Kathy Prendergasts, Patrick Collinses, they stood as little chance as those ducks and grouse when they came within the twinkling blue viewing frame of Pat Murphy. Four hundred works of Central American women's art live under his bed and he and his wife share their home with a tribe of Ashanti fertility goddesses.

Pat Murphy made money doing antisocial shifts as a brewer at Guinness's and as Arthur's emissary abroad - they doubled his pay when he went to Malaysia and Ghana, he says, and the tax regimes were lenient. He started his collection when he was 24 and it grew with his income: "I went without a coat to buy art," he says. "When I was a young man I used to find fault in the fact that Basil Goulding had so much art, but when you have it yourself, you find nothing wrong with it." He has no uneasiness at the idea of art as a possession: "Do you want a socialist or communist society in which everything belongs to the people? They don't appreciate art in socialist societies as much as we do in ours."

It would be easy to stereotype Pat Murphy as the obvious type of chairman to be appointed by a Fianna Fail/PD coalition, and to contrast his vision of the arts' role in society with that of chairman from 19931999, Ciaran Benson, who was considered a Labour appointee. While Ciaran Benson was the author of Art and the Ordinary, a radical argument for the rights of every citizen to artistic activity, Pat Murphy concentrates on his desire that everyone should be able to enjoy art: "My ambition," he says, "is that everyone should possess at least one work of art." How would that be achieved? "Well, by education and access. By bringing art to people and people to art.

Deirdre McLoughlin is a superb ceramic artist - I must declare an interest here, this was in my wife's new gallery (the Peppercannister) - "she was selling works for £250 and less to friends. You could spend that in a weekend drinking. Everyone can afford art in our full employment society, if we can persuade them to want it." So the poorly-paid and the unemployed don't exist any more? It's an obvious criticism. But the truth is that the division between his view of the arts' place in society and that of Michael D. Higgins's Council is only as different as Left is from Right in this State. Murphy obviously believes in "society" - he speaks of an "arts-led, civilised society": "There are all sorts of rewards to be had - not just financial rewards - through living with art.

I would like to see Ireland emerging as a more civilised society in the next Millennium." When I suggest he's more committed to artistic excellence than to access to the arts - these are the twin guiding principles within the Arts Council - he says he is "all for access" and "making art less an elitist thing". He then adds: "But art is elitist, isn't it? Not everyone can create art." So process, rather than product-orientated artistic activity should not be within the Arts Council's remit? He replies that the creativity of the public at large should be encouraged, and that the Arts Council may have to give seed funding, but that other organisations should fund this artistic activity - FAS, the Department of Education, the County Councils, the urban councils. The Arts Council, he says, "shouldn't fund things that are not true art". He goes on to praise the "exceptional" creativity in Irish visual art and literature, and adds that this should deepen as we develop into a multicultural society: "We need to have a broader perspective on the arts. When did you last see an African or Asian artists' exhibition here? The Arts Council will be seeking to address that."

Pat Murphy's focus was always international. Growing up in New Ross, Co Wexford, he read Oliver Goldsmith's A Citizen of the World and decided that was what he was. When he retired in January this year as sales and marketing director of Irish Malt Exports at the age of 60, he and his wife went to Thailand, where they rode elephants through the jungle and went white-water rafting "until I saw a river snake looking up at me and that cooled my enthusiasm." Guinness, which he joined with a B. Comm from TCD, gained at night, gave him the opportunity to sate his thirst for travel, and become immersed in international art - hence the extended family of African and Asian creatures which lives with him. Did he not have any qualms about taking them out of their own culture? "I knew that they'd been pilfered for 100 years by French, Italians, English - I felt national pride taking them back to Ireland, because so much had been taken from Ireland."

In Ghana, he was made an honorary chief of the Ashanti - under the name, "Brewery-heny". He presented the King with a huge bronze of "the Cuchulainn of the Ashanti", Akompe-nyotche, when he left.

Did he feel that he was part of the colonial system? "Yes," he says. "In Ghana we had six servants, garden boys, fruit gardens, a monstrous house." He adds, however, that when he arrived there he recruited 350 people: "One man said to me, `Please master, I have experience of brewery'. It turned out he had been cleaning the toilets. I took him on and he became a senior shift process man."

However, he tells the story of the Chinese advertisements for Guinness: "There's a baby in every bottle". "There were different labels on the bottles, and you'd hear them arguing, `The dog's head is better, no the wolf's head is'. It was the same stout in different bottles.' " He always intended to come back to Ireland, however, and when he returned in 1973, he began to be heavily involved in the visual arts world. In the late 1970s, he became involved in Rosc, the major international contemporary art exhibition which was founded in 1967 to run every four years. He took over from Michael Scott as chairman of the event in 1981, and ran the 1984 and 1988 exhibitions; he persuaded Guinness to refurbish the Hop Store as an exhibition space (an idea suggested to him by the painter Gerald Davis), and housed them there.

The event was then discontinued. It had a huge deficit and works of art - including some of Murphy's - had to be sold to clear it. IMMA had opened, which took away some of the need for it, and there was, says Murphy, "a feeling that funds for the arts were limited and we shouldn't be bringing in expensive art from abroad. Our feeling was - `right, let them have it.' "

IMMA has only done one "Rosc-like" international, selected exhibition since, which Murphy regrets. He also feels IMMA may do too much installation-based, conceptual art: "Painting will always be with us. Sculpture will always be with us," he says. "Much ideas-based art is ephemeral. Sometimes artists who are not skilled in the traditional sense can get away with it. Art history may judge them." He has much time for the conceptual artist, James Coleman, however, and also mentions Shane Cullen.

When Rosc juror, painter Michael Kane, leaked the list of the artists he had selected for the 1984 exhibition, Pat Murphy described him as "a bounder and a bully". He may, sadly, find he has to be more circumspect as chairman of the Arts Council, even if work pressures suddenly do away with all 16 members like the Asian flu. Sile de Valera offered him the job - he looks at his diary - at 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 15th - to his utter astonishment: "I looked her in the eye and said `yes'. Art collecting teaches you to be decisive."

Who advised her to appoint him? He doesn't know. "The director of the Arts Council (Patricia Quinn) would have known me. Michael Ronayne (the Minister's media adviser) would have known me. Ruairi O Cuiv was the installer of the exhibition The Artists' Century (102 works from the National Self-Portrait collection, with other works by the artists, which he helped organise) and he is related to the Minister. I'm quite well known, you know," he says good-naturedly. "I know Arthur Gibney, President of the RHA. Bertie Ahern knows me - I've lobbied him for the Irish Exporters' Association."

Was it a political appointment? Absolutely not, he says: "I'm an independent kind of person . . . The best people should always be appointed, the best people - not political hacks." It was his background in the arts, he indicates: "Last November I won a Gold Medal from the RHA for outstanding services for the arts in Ireland, and I became an Honourary Life Member, though I can't paint or draw a stroke. I'm a trustee of the National Self-Portrait Collection and joined the committee to produce the Artists' Century exhibition - and it's a right good one. I'm chairman of the Contemporary Artists' Society - I took over from Gordon Lambert and the Irish member of the International Council of MOMMA. They came over to see my collection and were happy when they saw a big black and white William Scott." He was also a member of the Arts Council from 1981 to 1988, appointed first by Fianna Fail and then by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition.

His emphasis on excellence, even his focus on the visual arts, are more typical of the Arts Council of the 1960s than that of today. But perhaps the biggest difference between the Arts Councils he served on and the one he chairs is means - next year Arts Council funding is expected to be £37.5 million. Here he hopes his business background will help - he has an MBA and mentions that he won the first Charles Harvey Award for management in 1965. "There are a lot of positive things about the council now," he says. "Patricia Quinn has an MBA, Nessa O'Mahoney (Director of Public Affairs) has been trained at the IMI, the Institute of Public Administration is already assisting them with advice." Classic management principles apply to the arts, he says: "The artists and the arts organisations are your customers."

There has been speculation, confirmed in a resignation letter by Paul Mc Guinness, that the three resignations from the Arts Council were partly prompted by the inefficiency of the body, which had 90 meetings last year. "I'll have to try to persuade Council members to do less," says Murphy. "I'll have to persuade them to take a less directorial role, to set targets for the Executive and evaluate how well they're doing. I hope I can persuade them to be brief and to do their thinking between meetings."

He hopes to dissolve the factions which have formed on the Council and contributed to the resignations by urging members to "put the national interest first: "I'll try to be diplomatic and persuasive, but if we have to, we'll put things to a vote." He says "an imbalance of influence" has been created by the fact that some members have much more time on their hands than others; by reducing the number of meetings he hopes that new members like the Provost of TCD, Dr Tom Mitchell, can play a full role. He also says he wouldn't be surprised if the amendment of the Arts Act, expected this year from Sile de Valera, didn't institute a smaller group, "maybe eight or nine people", and he worked to achieve small boards on Irish Exporters' Association and the Port and Docks Board: "Maybe they'll look at me at my first meeting and say, `You're getting rid of every second one of us," he says. Of course, the Minister may disband and reappoint the Council.

He describes the Arts Council Director, Patricia Quinn, whose management style has been said to have led to disquiet among members of the Executive and the board, as "trained, knowlegeable, task-orientated": "I'm greatly impressed that she's done an MBA. I suppose things like Gant Charts were a surprise to staff." He aims, he says, "to soften the edges between the Council and the staff. In life, you have to do trade-offs to get the best results." Will Patricia Quinn have to do more trade-offs? "Yes. We may all have to. We all have to take on the special interests and needs of all involved."

The circumstances which formed the background to the rumblings of discontent from the Council, and the resignations, included the fact that the Minister was late appointing the Council and Patricia Quinn had to "forge ahead" with the new Arts Plan. When he says that he "passionately" believes in the independence of the Council - "They're not rubber-stamping. If they were, it would be useless", I suggest they rubber-stamped the Plan. "That was an exception. But what could Patricia do?" he asks. An exception which constitutes the plan for the arts over the next three years.

Presiding over scones and cappuccino at the Merrion Hotel, Patrick Murphy chews merrily on the most indigestible questions. He seems a hugely happy man, who has a vastly fulfilled life with his wife, Antoinette - who he "spotted in the ESB" with his collector's eye - and four children, one named Bryan after a Guinness and one Maurice, after a chairman of Irish Malt Exports, "people that I admired along the way". He has two grandchildren, "marvellous little fellows". He has a degree in Irish and English literature from TCD, and loves music, mentioning Faure, Brahms, Dvorak's Rusalka and Tchaikovsky - "I'm an optimist and these things give me a bigger high every time I hear them". His love of art and his spirit may be enough to insulate him from a chair as electric as that of Sile de Valera's Arts Council, and there is certainly no doubting him when he leans forwards and says: "I think you respond to what you really like and then ask yourself `why?'. Why is this central to my life? Why am I on top of the moon?"