The Arts Council claimed it was a “lean public agency” that operates under a “value for money” model when unsuccessfully lobbying for €160 million in last year’s budget.
The State agency made the claims about its fiscal responsibility in June 2024, the same month that a doomed €6.7 million IT project was formally abandoned.
It sent its budget pitch to then arts minister Catherine Martin weeks before she was fully briefed about the money wasted on the doomed IT project.
In a letter to Ms Martin on June 26th last year, chair of the Arts Council Maura McGrath asked for the agency’s funding to be increased in Budget 2025 from €134 million to €160 million. The letter was released under Freedom of Information.
RM Block
The Arts Council had enjoyed four years of record-high Government funding, which was increased from a pre-Covid allocation of €80 million in Budget 2020 to €130 million for each budget between 2021 and 2023. It increased slightly again to €134 million in 2024.
In arguing for a further increase to €160 million in Budget 2025, Ms McGrath wrote to Ms Martin to say there was an “urgent need” for “significantly more” funding for the arts. She argued that the Arts Council was a “lean public agency”.
“The Arts Council operates a value for money model, with overhead costs at just 7.6 per cent in 2023,” Ms McGrath said.
She said this “area of expenditure” included among other things the Arts Council’s spend on information and communication technology.
Ms McGrath said the Arts Council “believes that €160 million is a realistic budget target for 2025”.
When the Government announced the agency would be getting €140 million in Budget 2025, still a record high for the culture body, the Arts Council put out a statement that said it “acknowledges” the funding announcement.
“We will, however, fall short in terms of meeting unprecedented demand for our funding schemes,” it said.
A comment from Maureen Kennelly, then director of the Arts Council, said “while the figure for 2025 is at the lower end of what we sought to meet unprecedented demand for our funding schemes and counter financial pressures in the sector, we look forward to working with Government to develop a sustainable future for the arts in Ireland”.
An Arts Council spokeswoman said its “expenditure on overheads has been and remains at under 10 per cent of our annual budget, meaning approximately 90 per cent of funding is spent on grants and arts expenditure each year”.
A briefing note prepared for Ms Martin for a meeting with the Arts Council ahead of Budget 2023 shows the arts minister had been under pressure to maintain funding again, as the view of then public expenditure minister Michael McGrath was that the €130 million annual funding was tied to pandemic support.
Ms Martin had appealed to the Arts Council to be “highly visible” and promote the work that it was doing so that Ms Martin could justify the funding to her cabinet colleagues.
“I can’t stress enough how hard I had to fight to secure the allocation of €130 million for 2022 and if there is any hope of securing a similar amount next year, I have to be able to show my ministerial colleagues exactly where the money is going,” a briefing note prepared for Ms Martin, which was released under Freedom of Information, said.
