Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The programme for a partnership Government contains a very important commitment to work progressively to increase funding to the arts, including the Arts Council and the Irish Film Board, as the economy continues to improve. I assure the Deputy that I will be engaging with my colleagues in Government and with the Oireachtas to seek to advance this commitment in the context of the forthcoming Estimates and budgetary processes.

I understand that the figures quoted by the Deputy are from a Council of Europe project called "Compendium: Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe". I understand that many European countries are not included in the figures, including ten EU member states. The data for the compendium project are provided by independent researchers and it is not a standardised system for the collection of statistics.

I further understand that the compendium project itself warns that data provided by the researchers are not comparable across countries because each researcher includes different elements in the definition of culture and these elements are reflected in the figures for public expenditure. For example, local authority expenditure on the arts, artists, exemption tax relief, expenditure on public service broadcasting and the Irish language are all examples of elements not included in the Council of Europe figures for Ireland but included in the figures for some other countries.

Expenditure on the arts in Ireland comes from multiple sources, both public and private. I understand that the CSO does not produce national statistics that capture the totality of this expenditure as a percentage of GDP. The issue of a definition of culture and of capturing public expenditure on culture is one that was discussed in the public consultation process held for the purpose of developing Ireland's first national cultural policy framework, Culture 2025.

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