Sir, – Further to Diarmaid Ferriter’s article (Opinion, May 29th). The raging fires of 1916 in central Dublin, the accompanying shelling by the gunboat Helga, the burning of Cork by the Black Tans, the destruction wrought by the Civil War and the pillage and plunder of Georgian Dublin by developers will all appear inconsequential when seen against the inglorious merging of our national cultural institutions by a Cabinet Minister and his Department of Arts who cravenly blame anybody and everybody but themselves for cultural vandalism on a grand scale.
It isn’t just that a tsunami of destruction is happening, it is the “laissez-faire” approach taken by Minister for Arts Jimmy Deenihan and his cohort of departmental apparatchiks, echoing Famine times in taking the view that it is outside his control. The Minister seems unable or unwilling to stop it and resist it, or else it really is his and his department’s view that this is a good thing.
Minister, stand up and make a fight for it: all that can be done is to fire you . . . But the long years ahead will not be glorious ones in popular arts memory for the present Minister for the Arts and his department, who are indeed presiding over the destruction of much of that which was wrought by Michael D Higgins as Minister for arts and culture – he didn’t just go the extra mile for arts culture, he put his head on the block time and time again.
Having plundered Culture Ireland, and now this, what IS the point of having the Arts seated at Cabinet if this is the out-turn? The lions of the arts are being led by political donkeys.
CIARÁN MACGONIGAL,
Art Historian Cultural
Strategist,
Edgeworthstown,
Co Longford.