Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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412. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will commit to the long-term goal of increasing arts funding to the European average of 0.6 % of gross domestic product. [19816/16]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for a Partnership Government contains a very important commitment to work to progressively increase funding to the arts as the economy continues to improve.

I can 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.

The figures quoted from the Council of Europe are from a project called Compendium - Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe. I understand that many European counties 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 collection of statistics.

I further understand that the Compendium 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.

The issue of a definition of culture and of capturing public expenditure on culture is one which was discussed in the public consultation process that was held for the purpose of developing Ireland's first national cultural policy, Culture 2025. My Department is continuing to consider inputs on the draft policy document from the Steering and Expert Groups which I established and I expect to forward a draft for consideration to the relevant Oireachtas Committee shortly.

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. However, I do consider that further research on this issue is warranted in the context of Culture 2025.