Madam, - As a former member of the management committee of Kilkenny Arts Week, I read with a certain irony Rosita Boland's piece that the festival is "wrestling with tight budgets" (The Irish Times, August 11th).
In my time, Arts Week was run by an entirely amateur management (in the sense that no one was paid) and we received an Arts Council subsidy of £25,000. Now the Arts Council provides €300,000 and the management is professional. Yet St Canice's Cathedral is "dark" for three evenings of the week, there are no lunchtime concerts by new performers and there are no organ recitals.
Where has the greatly increased subsidy gone? Administration? - Yours, etc.,
ROBERT MacCARTHY, Dean of St Patrick's, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8.