Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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44. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will provide a comparison between Ireland's arts expenditure and that of Spain, France, and Denmark. [47589/22]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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There are limited robust methodologies for international comparisons of Government expenditure on culture.  Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, collects data on general government expenditure by economic function using an international Classification of the Functions of Government (CoFoG).  

COFOG was designed by the United Nations in the 1970s and Eurostat applies a version of COFOG developed by the OECD.  Eurostat ensures the standardisation of methodologies across Member States as well as validating and disseminating the data.  

Under the system, public functions are divided into ten classes, which are further broken down into subclasses.  The 8th class is Recreation, culture and religion.  It has six subclasses as follows:- 

08 - Recreation, culture and religion

08.1 - Recreational and sporting services

08.2 - Cultural services

08.3 - Broadcasting and publishing services

08.4 - Religious and other community services

08.5 - R&D Recreation, culture and religion

08.6 - Recreation, culture and religion n.e.c. (not elsewhere classified)

While Class 8 as a whole is too broad to give any useful comparisons, the second and third sub-classes  - 08.2 Cultural Services and 08.3 Broadcasting and publishing services -  are of interest when comparing expenditure on the arts. New COFOG figures are published once a year in Spring for the penultimate complete calendar year.  Eurostat published figures for 2020 on 22 February 2022.  In each Sub-class, three sets of data are provided for each Member state and the EU average; amount of public expenditure, its percentage of total public expenditure and its percentage of GDP.  The table below give the 2020 figures for Ireland along with the EU average.

In 2020, Ireland's expenditure on cultural services totalled 0.8% of total public expenditure compared with the EU average of 1%, while expenditure on broadcasting and publishing services at 0.7% exceeded the EU average of 0.4%.  International comparisons based on GDP are complex in the case of the Irish economy.

The following table is of expenditure on a per capita basis based on Eurostat data (General Government expenditure by function (CoFoG) (online data code: GOV_10A_EXP).

Per capita General Government Expenditure on cultural services in Ireland in 2020 therefore was higher than the EU average.  In this context, it should be noted that expenditure on Arts and Culture by my Department in 2023 will over 82% higher than it was in 2020 due to a range of measures including the significant increase in funding for the Arts Council to its current record level of €130m, the introduction of the Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme, and higher levels of investment in Screen Ireland and cultural infrastructure.