Tania Banotti is determined to see the performing arts win back State funding as a key part of our cultural life, writes Peter Crawley

There's no pleasing some people. Not that Tania Banotti, chief executive of Theatre Forum, is unhappy with the Book of Estimates, in which the Government granted €52.5 million of a requested €53 million to the Arts Council for next year.

"We're really pleased," she enthuses of the 19 per cent increase on last year's budget before a sudden pivot in tone, "but also conscious that we still have one of the lowest levels of funding for the arts per capita in Europe. So we have a mountain to climb in future years."

Theatre Forum has become hard to ignore. Representing almost 200 performance companies, venues and festivals - and regarding itself as the voice of the performing arts in Ireland - it has established a very public profile. It has spelled out its concerns in demonstrations, on the airwaves, in articles and in block capitals on billboards and in theatre programmes: the Irish arts are in crisis.

It illustrated the point during Dublin's theatre festivals, last month, when the director Alan Standford cut off most of the dress being worn by the actress Fiona O'Shaughnessy: slashed funding was taking the clothes from artists' backs.

Although Theatre Forum had existed for a few years before the crippling Arts Council budget for 2003, its most recent phase was effectively born into, and out of, that crisis. It was a situation that many in the arts were slow to embrace; in the midst of severe cuts to theatre companies, an administrative body had secured €150,000 in its first grant from the Arts Council.

"I think the reason that it probably got funding was that it brought together such a mixed group of people for the first time," says Banotti, sitting in her organisation's modest new office. "In other words, there were commercial and subsidised theatres, from the Abbey to Andrews Lane, the Gaiety to the Peacock." This almost unprecedented level of organisation across the art form "was something the Arts Council wanted to respond to".

In her two months or so in the job, Banotti has been determined and tireless in her work. Driving a campaign "of explaining to the general public and to politicians what those cuts meant in practice for our members", Theatre Forum compiled statistics about the economic contribution of the arts and co-ordinated its members into lobbying "cells" around the country; Banotti virtually set up camp in the Dáil.

The performing arts have never appeared so acutely politicised, and Theatre Forum has assumed the role of a formidable lobbying body.

Banotti, however, prefers the word advocacy. When I use the L-word one time too many, she says politely that, because of the tribunals, "political lobbying has a connotation of being something dirty and underhand, something not above board".

The board of Theatre Forum, though, seems to have fewer qualms about the term - and fewer still with the strategy. "The lobbying has been overstated just because of the year that's in it," says board member Donal Shiels, who is general manager of Second Age Theatre Company. "I think you'll see many other activities with the forum next year, but it's always good to have that lobbying ability. As one politician said, if you're not lobbying you must be happy."

As chief executive of Film Makers Ireland for four and a half years, as a media lobbyist in Brussels before that - and also as a former activist with the United Nations in the Gaza Strip - Banotti must be no stranger to tense negotiation. "No, that's true," she smiles. Nor to exerting political pressure? "My background is in public affairs," she begins, "but it's all of a piece with trying to change people's minds, trying to make representation on behalf of the group that you believe in."

Given her background, Banotti admits surprise at how unfamiliar people in the performing arts had been with political activity. "Maybe because of the battles fought over the last while, the film industry is certainly more politicised." Focused by the urgency of an unpromising economic climate and still stinging from the dire situation of last year, members quickly embraced the bold and canny manoeuvring of the forum.

Patricia McBride, director of An Grianán Theatre in Co Donegal, is a case in point. "I took an active role in the recent lobby for additional funding," says McBride, "and I feel that the Theatre Forum was a trigger for that. They tracked down all the addresses of the Donegal county TDs and Seanad members, which was very helpful in terms of my own campaign to address the impact of the cuts here."

When I visited Banotti the day before the Book of Estimates was published, her Dublin office was a nexus of such activity. Following an earlier meeting with Charlie O'Connor, a Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin South-West, she praised "the Kilkenny guys" for campaign successes before taking a phone call from "the Sligo contingent", who reported back to her on a similar meeting.

It is hard not to be impressed. In McBride's opinion, Banotti's appointment has galvanised the organisation. "Theatre Forum is the first properly organised support group for any theatre organisation in my memory of working in Ireland, which stretches over 10 years," she says.

Theatre Forum is not without its critics, however, not least because of its complicated relationship with the Arts Council. Although part of Theatre Forum's income is derived from membership subscriptions (starting at €125 a year for individual membership, the fee rises according to a company's turnover - as the largest member, for example, the Abbey pays €1,500), it could not have developed into such a capable entity, nor employed such an impressive executive, without generous subsidy.

Funded by the Arts Council, its advocacy has involved similar aims to that organisation, such as restoring finance to honour the Arts Plan 2002-2006 and the restoration of multi-annual funding schemes. Some are doubtful whether such indirect funding from the Government leaves the organisation well placed to lobby ministers.

"It would be like the Department of Industry funding IBEC," says Mike Diskin of the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, which is not a member. "It is a creature of the Arts Council." Banotti is unfamiliar with the criticism. "In a sense we have two roles," she reasons. "We're funded by the Arts Council, but we would like to see ourselves as a partner in the discussions that the Arts Council has with the community about funding decisions and in other areas. We're there to express collective views that may be difficult or not welcome, but that's part of what any representative organisation does."

Although Banotti welcomes the transparency of the council's pre-Budget submission, published for the first time in its 52-year history, she has voiced concern about its more conservative application for future years.

"They have set out in their application the funding needed in 2005 and 2006, and it's 18 per cent less in 2005 and 24 per cent less in 2006 than the original Arts Plan. So that concern that they're setting their sights too low is still there." You can be too accepting of "political realities", she says; it can pay to be less compromising.

Johnny Hanrahan, the forum's chairman, is more emphatic. "In terms of dealing with the Arts Council we will certainly maintain a completely independent position, representative of the membership's views. We don't feel beholden to implement or parrot Arts Council policy, nor indeed have we been put under decisive pressure by the Arts Council to do that. They are very keen to see an independent body develop."

Although there will always be another battle to wage on behalf of the performing arts, Theatre Forum's next efforts will be towards self-definition. "We are not just about advocacy by any means," says Hanrahan.

But where the urgency of the climate has made advocacy so prominent, its future endeavours are less certain. A cogent pre-Budget submission, for instance, calculated the contribution the performing arts make to the economy (€77.1 million), the spin-off income from cultural tourism (€88.1 million) and the amount of Arts Council funding that is returned to the Department of Finance through employee taxes (100 per cent).

Next time, though, the worth of the arts must also be expressed in cultural terms. "We don't want to make the mistake that has been made in other sectors," says Banotti. She suggests that advocacy will next year take a back seat to the more humdrum activities of running a trade association, such as providing group insurance, group medical insurance, training courses and a legal hotline.

Another objective will involve tackling the VAT Act 1972, which leaves non-resident entertainers liable to 21 per cent VAT on their (usually inconsiderable) earnings - an issue important to international festivals such as Wexford Festival Opera and Dublin Theatre Festival.

Other pursuits are strong on attitude but weaker on specifics. The first annual conference, for instance, will include "a challenging reflection on a general theme of vital importance to our members", including a guest speaker who will "offer a radical challenge to our cherished assumptions about the theme" - the theme has still to be decided.

Although it is hard to calibrate the effect of Theatre Forum's campaign on the final Book of Estimates when both the Arts Council and John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, had been fighting their corner, the signs are nonetheless encouraging.

Once the honeymoon is over, however, Banotti recognises that her next challenge will be to accommodate the concerns of a membership disparate in size and interest. What's good for the pike, after all, isn't always best for the minnow.

"That will be my responsibility," she says, "to make sure that everybody's voice will be heard, to keep everybody on board and enthusiastic for the project. And I suppose I'll be judged on that." In the meantime, the message may have dropped to lower-case letters, but the crisis is not yet over.

"I don't think so," says Banotti. "There's certainly been a sigh of relief that the minister has come through for us next year. But the bigger picture is to bring funding for the arts in line with other European countries. It is still the battle to fight on an ongoing basis." Budget allowing.