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June 2017 4 5
N
OT ENTIRELY due to its own efforts,
Aosdána has often been more
associated with controversy and
letters-page hullaballoos than its
members’ artistic fruits – perhaps
most darkly in 1997, after writer Francis Stu-
art’s horrific remark on Channel 4 that “the
Jew was always the worm that got into the
rose and sickened it”. Back then, at the annual
Aosdána Assembly, Máire Mhac an tSaoi
(backed by her voluble late husband Conor
Cruise O’Brien from the public benches),
failed to effect Stuart’s expulsion from the
organisation, before promptly resigning
herself.
Another rash of negative press broke out in
2014, some of it snippy about the comparative
obscurity of many members (and the non-
membership of many remowned Irish artists).
Some was in the spirit of “what do Aosdána
do to earn their annual €2.7 million?” -
although the famed Cnuas is no king’s
ransom. Some pieces were error-riddled and
uninformed; others convulsed by loathing of
Aosdána’s exclusive, self-electing nature and
its easily-ridiculed bardic pretensions and the
orotundity of its Gaelic nomenclature. This
was the case with Village’s Kevin Kiely piece.
Mannix Flynn made rather technical argu-
ments about democratic deficits in Aosdána’s
selection of its Saoithe (or “wise ones”). Most
disconcertingly, an FoI request from the
Sunday Times led to a great deal of personal
and financial information being released by
the Arts Council (with some members given a
chance to redact), although in the end, very
little was published.
Aosdána’s very gestation is deeply con-
tested. Brian Kennedy’s surprisingly
engaging Arts Council-funded history of the
Arts Council, ‘Dreams and Responsibilities’
(1990) recounts how, back in 1980, when most
artists worked part-time or in penury (despite
Charles J Haughey artists’ tax exemption
under the 1969 Finance Act), an Arts Council
report moved Haughey to consult his arts
advisor, the late Anthony Cronin. According
to Kennedy, the first suggestion came from
the Arts Council, then headed by Colm
O’Briain, to extend the old Ciste Cholmcille
annuity for destitute artists to deserving
working artists. Haughey told the Arts Council
he wanted established artists to be spared
demeaning annual applications for assis-
tance. O’Briain proposed to Cronin a
rolling-funding scheme called An Torc for 100
creative artists; Cronin suggested 150.
Haughey took ownership and ran with it.
Kennedy contends the Arts Council then
developed the proposal into “an affiliation of
artists” to honour those who “had made an
outstanding contribution to the arts”, and to
help them devote their energies fully to their
art. Free from political interference, the new
Aosdána (the name suggested by Arts Council
member Máire de Paor) would be self-govern-
ing through its elected administrative body,
the Toscaireacht; while distinguished mem
-
bers could be selected as Saoithe (wise ones),
with a symbolic golden torc conferred upon
each Saoi by the serving President of Ireland.
While election to Aosdána is a life-time
honour, the Cnuas (now €17,180 annually) for
five years is means-tested (members must
The Arts Council is
moving in on Aosdána’s
Toscaireacht but nobody
knows just why, or
even how
by Mic Moroney
Confusion
fuels need for
mediation
Aosdána, 2017
O’Hagan’s committee concluded that the Cnuas
in its current form was an inescapable “non-
discretionary”, “demand-led” burden on the Arts
Council’s resources, with “largely unquantifiable
benefits” which were “not measurable”
4 6 June 2017
CULTURE
currently earn less than €25,000 from their art,
so total allowed tax-free earnings is a decent
€42,180); while the Cnuas is unique in that,
unlike any other Arts Council grant, Cnuas-hold-
ers must relinquish other state benefits and any
gainful employment other than artistic. Yet it is
not a pension, and must be-reapplied for every
five years. About 150 now receive it; while the
membership limit has expanded to 250 (247 cur-
rently filled)
The Arts Council approved Aosdána in Sep-
tember 1980. Haughey launched it in March
1981, and the first invited 89 members were soon
baptised – for O’Briain “the culmination of six
year’s work” by the Arts Council. Yet these were
volatile political times. In 1982, newspaper arti
-
cles appeared suggesting Haughey wanted to
eject Ó Briain from the Arts Council. Kennedy
claims Cronin approached Arts Council Chair-
man James White to express this, but White
refused; asserting the Arts Council’s independ-
ence, which was ultimately rewarded with a
healthy 25% increase in government funding. A
FG-Labour government took over in December
1982, and in April 1983, Aosdána was inaugu-
rated at its first General Assembly, attended by
Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, along with Haughey
and Jack Lynch. Three weeks later O’Briain
resigned as Arts Council director.
O’Briain stands by all this, but muses that
“this narrative was ultimately overtaken by the
‘grand political vision’… you have to realise there
was a real atmosphere of fear at the time”. He
doesn’t refer to widespread rumours, around the
febrile time when FF TD Jim Gibbons was vio-
lently assaulted by Haughey supporters the
night of the `Club of 22’ leadership challenge in
October 1982, that Haughey once threatened to
arrive in that way of his and personally shut
down the Arts Council.
Cronin always hotly contested Kennedy’s
account. Soon after his book was published,
there was an infamous conference where dis
-
played copies had printed corrections affixed
with an elastic band - instantly christened the
“intellectual condom”. Then it emerged that
unsold copies had been shredded by the Arts
Council during Haughey’s last term as Taoise-
ach. The Arts Council’s stated reason was to save
space in its roomy Merrion Square offices. In
1993, the new Arts Council chairman, Ciaran
Benson immediately ordered it reprinted in full,
and it is now online.
Somehow this legacy writhes at the bottom of
the current imbroglio between the Arts Council
and Aosdána. The Arts Council still maintains it
established Aosdána; but while the role of Reg
-
istrar was traditionally occupied by the sitting
Arts Council Director; it is now delegated to an
“acting Registrar” Arts Council employee, with
a part-time assistant. Many Aosdána members
hold that Cronin and Haughey forged its basic
architecture, then nested it with the Arts Council
for administrative and Cnuas-disbursal pur-
poses, and that the Arts Council suffers from
“institutional amnesia”.
Within the arts, it didn’t help that in 2008
(when Aosdána members Theo Dorgan and Colm
Tóibín sat on the Council), the annual Cnuas
leapt from €13,000 to €17,180; with a corre
-
sponding rise in the artistic-earnings threshold,
which made many more members eligible. When
the Crash finally slammed through Ireland, most
artists’ incomes were savaged; meaning yet
more eligible applicants for the ring-fenced
Cnuas eating an ever growing percentage of Arts
Council spending while the Arts Council’s budget
allocation plummeted from €85 to €55m, spread-
ing grisly austerity – and seething envy - across
the arts sector.
In September 2015, Arts Minister Heather
Humphries launched her department’s ‘Value for
Money and Policy Review of the Arts Council’
report; prepared by TCD Economics Professor
John O’Hagan atop a cross-departmental com-
mittee of bean-counters. It made an econometric
“case-study” of Aosdána – on which, bizarrely,
Aosdána was not consulted. O’Hagan concluded
that the Cnuas in its current form was an ines-
capable “non-discretionary”, “demand-led”
burden on the Arts Council’s resources, with
“largely unquantifiable benefits” which were
“not measurable”. At a time of constrained fund-
ing, he pointed out, the Cnuas was one of the few
funding streams to enjoy an absolute increase
over the period reviewed (€0.6m), and stressed
“the need to demonstrate outputs for the invest-
ment”. He recommended considerations of how
to measure and publicise Cnuas-holders’ output;
as well as setting caps on Cnuas funding and/or
varying the level of the Cnuas.
A month later, when Arts Council Chair Sheila
Pratschke met the Toscaireacht, only one
Toscaire had even heard of the Value for Money
report; yet Pratschke also cited the Arts Coun
-
cil’s 2014 ‘Inspiring Prospects’ strategy
document (which declared Aosdána an affiliation
and not a formal organisation) in calling for
reform of the Cnuas. Claiming that Aosdáma was
the Arts Council’s second biggest client; she
expressed determination to push the existing
balance of 80%:20% between “non-discretion-
ary” and more flexible “discretionary spending”
for other individual artists and projects. Cnuas
reform, she suggested, could right that balance
towards 70%:30%.
Over a complex 18-month kerfuffle of meet-
ings and heated, sometime legal
correspondence, the Arts Council’s chronology
since is often at sharp variance with Aosdána’s;
especially after the Arts Council’s now-infamous
and “confidential” Aosdana Review Document
was sent to the Toscaireacht on November 4th
2016. This “humdinger” impelled Mary FitzGer-
ald, Chair of the Toscaireacht, to write back to
clarify nothing had been agreed with Aosdána,
reminding the Arts Council that such profound
changes could not be effected without a unani-
mous decision by the Arts Council.
The major change proposed by the Review
Document was to Cnuas eligibility, redefining
“full-time practising artists” as “working artists
engaged in productive practice”. It proposed
that elderly artists who failed to meet this crite-
rion would be offered informational assistance
in claiming their pension entitlements from the
State, with perhaps the Ciste Cholmcille to sup
-
plement such shortfalls. More shockingly,
non-elderly artists “temporarily incapacitated
due to ill health” would have their Cnuas sus-
pended and would not be eligible for the Ciste.
Alongside a new Orwellian “full audit” of
artistic work for all five-yearly Cnuas renewals;
the Arts Council now proposed to conduct
annual “sample audits” to confirm “productive
practice”. The Aosdána pension scheme would
be “phased out”; while the VHI scheme would
be instantly discontinued for Aosdáma mem-
bers who were, after all, not staff employees of
the Arts Council.
The Arts Council would take over the member-
ship-nomination process with an external panel
of high-profile national and international “indi
-
viduals/experts” nominated by both Arts Council
and Toscaireacht who could nominate new mem-
bers – using a new “scoring system” of, say, “A:
must shortlist” to “D: doesn’t meet the
criterion”.
The shocked Toscaireacht now faced a true
shake-up which they feared was the beginning
of a dismantlement of the Cnuas in particular;
plus the kind of “quality control” that would add
“bling” to the membership. The possibility of a
significantly increased Arts Council workload
was not revealed to Arts Council staff; apart from
the acting Registry staff.
Alarmed that the Arts Council was going
beyond its remit, removing legal entitlements
and wresting self-governance from Aosdána, the
Toscaireacht sought advice from former Attorney
General, John Rogers SC; who found that such
fundamental changes were at odds with the
The Review
Document redefined
“full-time practising
artists” as “working artists
engaged in productive
practice”. Elderly artists who
failed to meet this criterion
would be offered informational
assistance in claiming pension
entitlements from the State,
with perhaps a supplement
June 2017 4 7
“clear intent conveyed by the Aosdána Founda-
tion Documentation”. While it seems that
Aosdána is nowhere enshrined in any law or stat-
utory instrument, such “Documentation”
remains something of a mystery. Yet Rogers
advised the Toscaireacht not to engage the Arts
Council in discussions on such swingeing
proposals.
But troubling signs had emerged that the Arts
Council was unilaterally implementing its Review
Document proposals ultra vires. The annual tax-
returns process involved repeated calls and
letters to artists, badgering them for ever-more-
detailed submissions with complex forms and
online registrations to verify income. Artist were
becoming forced to pay accountants and tax con-
sultants, driving elder members to distress (and
consideration of resignation) in their attempts to
satisfy the Arts Council’s auditors with “the com-
plete income picture”. Some felt accused of
dishonesty; others objected that Revenue offi-
cials had declared their returns were perfectly
fine; and that Revenue, not the Arts Council, was
the sole arbiter of tax affairs; while the Arts
Council should by rights not have access to such
detailed personal and financial information.
FitzGerald cannot discuss the many elderly
artists she assists through extreme illness and
such distress, yet now she says she now deals
“night, noon and morning” with those swamped
by the ever-expanding, information-harvesting
bureaucracy, even for annual “audits”.
Artist Brian King spent the first three months
of this year consumed by the annual “audit”,
fearing not only the loss of the Cnuas, his sole
income, but also of its honour. After the Arts
Council finally cleared his returns, King – despite
living alone with limited mobility and vision after
a near-fatal illness - returned to work, dreaming
new land-art installations while panoramically
photographing the seafront near his home with
the help of his daughter. He died, aged 74, in
mid-April.
There was also something unseemly about the
anxious five months of “review” of his Cnuas
that Patrick Pye (88) endured before the Arts
Council informed him in April that he no longer
qualified. Though demonstrating he had pro-
duced works of artistic merit in the last 5 years,
Pye had admitted his failing sight and infirmity,
which the Arts Council seized on.
Advising his “likely” eligibility for an old age
pension (c €11,500) from the Department of
Social Protection (DSP), the Arts Council offered
to top it up to €17,500 with the Ciste Colmcille
(while the DSP independently advised that any
such modicum would be deducted from Pye’s
pension). Undaunted, Pye works on, assisted by
family. His pieces in IMMA’s impressive current
show, ‘As Above, So Below’ have attracted much
attention; while his painting ‘Pity for the King of
Friday’ has just been accepted by the Vatican
where it now hangs outside the offices of the
Congregation for Divine Worship.
Quite why the Arts Council visited such rigours
on such a warmly regarded artist is beyond
public relations logic. The Pye family, having
been denied an appeal, have heard no more from
the Arts Council; and are considering legal
action. Lest the Arts Council set a precedent
with his case, Pye went public two days before
Aosdána’s General Assembly on 24 April: the
same day Colm Tóibín’s open letter of protest to
the Arts Council detonated across the media.
The General Assembly unanimously passed
motions calling for the Arts Council to restore
Pye’s Cnuas; withdraw its Review document; and
to provide the Toscaireacht contact details of all
Aosdána members (which the Arts Council was
withholding, citing data protection legislation).
The Assembly shared the Toscaireacht’s deep
concerns about the proposed changes to Aos-
dána’s electoral processes and Cnuas payments;
but found the climate of conflict highly undesir-
able, recommending “a fresh start to
discussions”.
Toscairí such as composer Michael Holohan
have been researching the online minutes of Arts
Council meetings back to discussions of the
Review Document in October 2016, all of which
is “redacted” under heavy black blocks under
the Freedom of Information Act 2014 - other than
that “Brian Maguire, [Aosdána member],
declared a conflict and left the meeting. Mem
-
bers agreed all recommendations. An appendix
is attached to the Minutes”. (No such appendix
appears).
“Worse, in the minutes for 22 March 2017,
which evidently considered Pye’s Cnuas, follow-
ing “detailed discussions” and legal advice,
“members agreed not to award a Cnuas to
[redacted]. Brian Maguire, Council Member,
asked for his dissent to be recorded. Minutes
also record Members agreed “not to award a
Cnuas to [redacted]”.
“Additionally Members agreed a Working
Group comprising Council members would be
established to review Aosdána procedures… it
was agreed that the Toscaireacht should be writ-
ten to and informed of Council’s approach.
Members agreed that a communications briefing
should also be prepared… Following detailed
discussions Members agreed in principle to
make two awards under Ciste Cholmcille to
[redacted]”.
This means Pye was not alone – another
elderly Aosdána member had suffered the same
plight, but the Toscaireacht are mystified as to
who this is. Meanwhile, Maguire, cold-called by
Village on a mobile phone at Berlin airport, fum-
ingly professed himself “caught by
confidentiality” and unable to comment.
The most recent minutes available are for the
Arts Council meeting of 26 April, which record
that “Members were updated on ongoing mat-
ters including the deliberations of the Arts
Council Working Group. Members agreed that
there was a need to open formal communica-
tions, without pre-conditions, with the
Toscaireacht. Members agreed that representa-
tives from the Council should include John
McAuliffe, one other Council Member and the
Director… Members also agreed there was a
need to appoint a mediator agreeable to both
sides to progress the process”. –This is followed
by a substantial paragraph, again totally blacked
out. On the Cnuas, minutes record: “Members
approved the recommendation…. An appendix
is attached to the Minutes” (again, no appendix
is evident).
While Arts Council Chair Sheila Pratschke’s
Irish Times article (May 13) finally announced
that the review document was “off the table”,
despite repeated requests from Village no fur-
ther comment is forthcoming from either
Pratschke or Arts Council director Orlaith
McBride, who sat on the Arts Council for two
terms, before becoming its director in 2012. Her
contract has been renewed up to 2020
With the Arts Council now seeking mediated
negotiations, the Toscaireacht are even looking
at mechanisms like the 2003 Arts Act’s provision
for the Minister to establish “special [advisory]
committees” within the Arts Council. After a
spirited Dáil spat about the absurdity of the situ-
ation with Minister Humprheys on May 2, Joan
Burton is due to table another question on Tues-
day 13 June; while John McAuliffe, Arts Council
Vice-Chair – although seemingly not writing in
that capacity - has just made overtures via email
to the Toscaireacht about mediated meetings.
The Toscaireacht is considering its options,
while no one can be enjoying the stand-off.
Though demonstrating he
had produced works of artistic
merit in the last 5 years, Pye
had admitted his failing sight
and infirmity, which the Arts
Council seized on
Patrick Pye at opening
of ‘As Above, So Below’
