Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I am delighted to speak on this motion on the arts and culture. My party and I thought it important to facilitate the House with an opportunity to debate this important sector given the debate that is currently taking place outside the House. I welcome and thank the Deputies from other political parties and none who have signed our motion in support of arts and culture and also acknowledge that the Members of the Upper House will debate a similar motion tomorrow. I welcome the visitors in the Gallery. The numbers present highlight the concern of many people within this sector.

The recent Indecon report shows that the arts provide significant direct and indirect employment. The arts sector supports 21,300 jobs and contributes €306.8 million in taxes but when the wider creative industry, such as film, animation, archives, museums etc, is included, the arts support 79,000 jobs and contribute €4.7 billion to the economy annually. Cultural tourism, according to Fáilte Ireland, now accounts for a spend of more than €2 billion annually with very healthy projected double-digit increases year on year. The Gathering in 2013 exemplifies a new tourism dynamic in which our cultural attractions, reputation for delivering outstanding artistic experiences and our cultural heritage will play a significant role.

While not to diminish the value of economic activity and the importance of national solvency, we all live in a society, not an economy. Contrary to popular belief, the arts are not a minority interest. Recent figures show that 66% of the adult population are art attendees. The Government has been at pains to say it is working extremely hard to rebuild our international reputation, a reputation that while in opposition it did not care much about when everything it did was politically motivated.

Irish artists are internationally acclaimed, many having received very prestigious awards. The Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney recently received the Griffin Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievements. Similarly, Brendan O'Carroll and other Irish actors brought many BAFTA awards back to Ireland earlier this year. All these enhance our prestige and keep us in the spotlight.

This year, the Imagine Ireland festival in the United States has sent thousands of artists to 40 states and they will join with hundreds of thousands of people and this will generate multi-million dollars worth of positive media coverage.

Apart from the brand awareness which the arts create internationally, the arts play a pivotal role in our communities. Recently members of the arts and culture committee received many presentations from various arts groups, varying from inner city groups that work with the disadvantaged, help create a sense of identity, confidence and help others live out their lives creatively to rural arts projects of which the same can be said.

Sustained investment in infrastructure and capacity during the past decade has created a dynamic arts sector that produces in excess of 12,000 arts events and festivals annually. When I think of my constituency I think of the magnificent work been carried out by the Mullingar Arts Centre, at which I attended an event on Saturday night and there was a full house, the Backstage Theatre in Longford and the Dean Crowe Centre in Athlone. These are all venues supported by the Arts Council in conjunction with their local authorities and without such support they would not be in operation today.

A group that encompasses international, national and community culture is Comhaltas CeoltóiríÉireann. Down the years Comhaltas has promoted respect for all traditions on this island. To underline this, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann will be held in Derry next year where all traditions will be involved. Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, which will be held in Cavan this year for the third year, attracts attendances of up to 300,000 people and generates €40 million for the host region.

As we approach a decade of commemoration, it is timely to take stock. We must recognise the fundamental importance of cultural value as a component of public value. Our pre-eminence on an international scale in terms of our cultural heritage has been a significant contributor to our national identity, pride and prestige.

The national cultural institutions are our independent guardians of our cultural heritage. The role of cultural institutions as political, institutional, cultural and social repositories of our collective history is vital to mediating and interpreting our history in order that it is widely appreciated and understood. These institutions, many of which precede the founding of the State, will play a central role in mediating the experiences of 1916. It will be a damning legacy of this Government if these institutions, so central to the narrative of our journey before and since Independence, were profoundly comprised as we approach the centenary of these many significant events in our national history.

In light of this it is extremely disappointing that the Minister failed to engage in a swift, meaningful and purposeful consultation with the national cultural institutions. This is not an accusation coming from an Opposition TD but it is what is been said about the Minister by the sector. Meaningful consultation is essential for all effective reform. The complete absence of an official framework through which the sector could effectively contribute to the formulation of effective and positive reform is of grave concern. Consultation, such as it has been, has resulted from the political pressure in recent weeks. In fact, many believe that were it not for the resignation of Professor Ferriter from the National Library, this issue would not be receiving the attention it deserves.

Given where we currently are fiscally, the sector recognises the need for budgetary discipline and embraces the principle of reform. The galleries, the National Gallery, IMMA and the Crawford Art Gallery, have submitted a document on where greater efficiencies can be achieved through shared services while at the same time retaining their own independence.

It is essential that reform is evidence-based and takes account of international best practice. It is essential that a thorough cost-benefit analysis on the proposed rationalisation of the national cultural institutions is conducted rigorously and in the public domain. I pose the question to the Minister as to why a cost benefit analysis has not being carried out and, if one has been carried out, to identify the savings that these mergers would generate. There are 113 national archives in the world and only two of them are merged with a national library. The recent Canadian merger of these two institutions ended up costing an additional Canadian $15 million. The independence and autonomy of the sector is crucial and political interference should be avoided at all costs.

For more than 60 years, Governments have adhered to the arm's-length principle. Successive Acts have enshrined the principle of independence of our cultural institutions. That freedom is especially important in the arts, where the competencies, expertise and networks at both director and board level of cultural institutions are critical. Sound governance, intellectual rigor and creative autonomy at the helm of our institutions is more important than political expediency or short-term budgetary outlooks, especially so in the decade of commemorations. The then Minister for the Arts and now President Michael D. Higgins, introduced the National Cultural Institutions Act 1997, allowing the National Library appoint its own independent board with the required expertise. The current proposal would require existing Labour Party Deputies to rescind this legislation.

The directors of the national cultural institutions have a significant cultural leadership role. The sector insists on an open, transparent and independently adjudicated competition for director positions of each national cultural institution. I do not mean to say that the newly appointed chief executive officer of Culture Ireland is not qualified for the post but it was an internal competition. What happened to the commitment in the programme for Government to ensure that all public appointments would be open to external candidates?

If boards are merged or subsumed I ask where would this leave the plans for such a recruitment process and the succession plan for each and every national cultural institution. How will our national cultural institutions respond to the challenges of the decade ahead if there is a leadership vacuum, given that by this time next year, four of the national cultural institutions will have been effectively decapitated, the National Library, the National Archives, the National Museum and Culture Ireland? How does the Department propose to provide these institutions with the competencies, expertise, networks and vision formerly provided by independent directors and boards? I ask what will be the cost of these boards. Many people who served on the various boards offered their expertise for free to an institution which they loved and wished to see develop. Independent boards are better placed to seek philanthropic donations and funding and they offer sound corporate governance. If the proposed mergers go ahead, it will lead to an erosion of institutional independence and an over-reaching on the part of the Department in the work of these institutions. I question whether the Department even has the capacity to take on the additional work.

This proposal highlights the cultural policy vacuum created by this Government and profoundly compromises the capacity of these institutions to deliver on their core mission of providing public access to our cultural assets. In the absence of a cost-benefit analysis and a vision statement, we do not know how these new proposals will deliver a better service, offer better access to the public or increase the visitor numbers to these institutions. I urge all Members to support this motion and I look forward to listening to contributions from the Minister and other Members.

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