Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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332. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the estimated full-year cost of doubling the current spending on the arts; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24028/23]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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333. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the estimated full-year cost of increasing the spending on the Arts by 10% [24029/23]

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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356. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the estimated cost of increasing the annual expenditure on An Chomhairle Ealaíon by 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25%. [24564/23]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 332, 333 and 356 together.

The 2023 Budget overall allocation towards the arts and culture programme is €356.982m. 10%, of that amount is €35,698.20m while doubling the figure at 100% would be €713,964m.

The 2023 allocation to An Chomhairle Ealaíon /the Arts Council is €130.488m. 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% of that amount is €6.524m, €13.049m, €19.573m, €26.098m and €32.622m respectively.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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334. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the estimated full-year cost of increasing spending on the Arts to the EU average of 0.6% of GDP; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24030/23]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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Arriving at meaningful comparisons for international expenditure is challenging for a number of reasons. As has been acknowledged by my colleague the Minister for Finance, and as is generally acknowledged, as one of the most globally-integrated economies in the world, and with a large foreign owned footprint, interpreting conventional measures of economic activity such as GDP is especially challenging in an Irish context. In addition, there are limited robust methodologies for international comparisons of Government expenditure on culture.

Eurostat as 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). 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. While Class 8 as a whole is too broad to give any useful comparisons, the second sub-class of Cultural Services incorporates the arts. COFOG figures are published once a year in Spring for the penultimate complete calendar year. Eurostat published figures for 2021 in February 2023. 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.

In 2021, 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%.

There has been sustained and significant growth in public expenditure to support arts and culture under the current Government and I will look to sustain and where possible increase that support in the context of the forthcoming Budget Estimates process.