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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
36June 2015
D
ESPITE all the negativity that
can whirl around any local
authority, much of the remit
of Dublin City Council (DCC)
is exciting. But it is not popu-
larly associated with the arts of which
– if you include Temple Bar – it is the
biggest curator in the country. Most of
the accolades go to the Arts council and
the Department of Arts.
DCC does not blow its own trumpet
but then again it lacks a cohesive overall
policy as well as strategy and vision. It
has no brand and therefore it fails to
benefit from public goodwill that its arts
activities could attract. The apex of
DCC’s arts structure is the city arts
officer, Ray Yeates. The very name
betrays the lack of dynamism. Arts
officer is oxymoronic, whatever about
Dublin City arts officer. Why not have an
Arts “Commissioner” as they have in
New York?
In DCC the arts are “managed”
through all sorts of sub committees,
with arts managers and personnel all
jockeying for the limelight and constitu-
ency favour. Overall responsibility falls
in the lap of a Strategic Policy Commit-
tee (SPC) but its remit is too broad: Arts,
Culture, Recreation and Community.
And even worse, and most importantly,
there is no suggestion of the balance
DCC intends to strike between partici-
pative, Community Arts on the one
hand and world-class excellence in Art,
on the other. These can go hand in hand
but usually do not. It is an anonymous
rubber-stamp that never challenges,
asserts best practice, or holds to
account.
The SPC’s endeavours are also para-
lysed by bureaucracy, the imperative to
deal with logistical matters such as the
minutiae of parks management and an
obsession with the commissioning of
long-winded reports full of artspeak
and jargon. Any area offering a bit of
ould art gets designated a cultural clus-
ter, an emerging arts district or a hub.
Typical is the Parnell Square cultural
quarter and the €m proposed new
Central Library at its heart: it fails
entirely in its plan to acknowledge the
well-established Hugh Lane gallery.
CEO Owen Keegan and other senior
members of staff at DCC had no idea of
the structures of the companies behind
the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter
until I did some research and raised the
issue with them. Somehow a body called
the Parnell Square Foundation (PSF)
operating with the philanthropic sup-
port of Kennedy Wilson, a major US
vulture-capital developer recently come
to town, has been charged with the
development of the square. It is only
recently DCC took possession of the Par-
nell Square property formerly Coláiste
Mhuire owned by the Christian
Brothers, which had been handed over
to the State as part atonement for their
involvement in institutional abuse
(Ryan report). It was transferred to DCC
by the OPW in a land swap. The plans for
Parnell Square notably fail to embrace
the State-owned lands surrounding the
Rotunda Hospital. A plan by Dublin
Civic Trust showing how the space could
be opened up as a park to rival Stephen’s
Green merely serves to emphasise the
limited remit and lack of dynamism of
DCC’s approach.
I brought a motion calling on DCC to
appoint Councillors to the board of the
PSF. Strangely, the Chair of the arts SPC
and some territorial DCC staff who serve
on the PSF wholly opposed my motion
but she lost the argument and the Arts
SPC overwhelmingly agreed the motion.
The Culture, Recreation and
Inadequate accountability, personalisations, over-broad remit, lack of focus on excellence and
on artists, quango-promotion, bureaucracy and jargon. By Mannix Flynn
Why I resigned from Dublin
City Council’s Arts Committee
POLITICS Mannix Flynn
The Impac
company no
longer exists
so we should
reconstitute
the prize in the
name of DCC
“
June 2015 37
Community Section spends around
€m annually (), of which €m
goes on the arts, and all of its activities
should be scrutinised. The Arts SPC
proving deficient in this, I have had to
resign. I felt that the chairperson, Mary
Freehill, was creating obstacles and
personalising issues I raised, presuma-
bly at the request of senior staff and
management who simply don’t want me
anywhere near their boards particularly
the Parnell Square foundation.
The systemic problems are deep-
rooted – underpinned by the usual
local-authority problem of the real
power residing with management not
elected members.
Community beanos are not the same
as high culture; and it is possible to be
interested in both without caring how
the grass in city parks is cut. Dublin City
Council receives almost a billion euros
annually to operate the city. But there is
little accountability and Councillors are
loth to haul officials and quangos to
account because of the dynamic where
keeping officials on board may reward
Councillors with the fruits of goodwill
the next time they need urgent official
attention for a constituent. Even when
there is evidence of torpor or impropri-
ety DCC moves slothfully. It took over
four years years for Dublin City Council-
lors and Dublin City Council to act
properly over the Temple Bar Cultural
Trust (TBCT), which we ultimately
replaced. Every step of the way certain
Councillors saw fit to protect the cosy
cartel of TBCT.
Why do we continue to spend the guts
of €, on the literary ‘Impac’
prize, with its strange worldwide-li-
brary-led nominations procedure that
seems always to throw up Colum
McCann? The Impac company no longer
exists so we should reconstitute the
prize in the name of DCC.
More generally, why do we not claim
credit for our greatest institutions? The
DCC logos in the Hugh Lane gallery are
actually painted over.
The recent designation as UNESCO
city of literature would appear to just
have consisted of a whole load of plastic
signs being stuck onto buildings. Noth-
ing meaningful has happened and the
same familiar celebs and well-
thought-of authors and poets have been
paraded in and around predictable and
over-staged events.
Dublin City Council recently put up
for sale two unique mews stables on
Dawson Street. According to the Dublin
Civic Trust they are the only remaining
examples of their kind in the city. They
have been in the charge of Dublin City
Council for the past years but have
descended into dilapidation – reminis-
cent of Dublin corporation’s total
disregard for the Wood Quay Viking site
back in the day.
All this money slushing around while
people you know are losing their homes
and ending up on the streets. Against
this backdrop Dublin City Council is
going to spend tens of thousands of
euros on its bid for the European City of
culture. In order to be successful in that
particular enterprise, they seriously
need to up their game and get their act
together before their own curtain falls
on their own head. God only knows
what’s in store for us for – all they
seem to have done so far is throw out
€, for various community-
based projects like ‘memory gathering’
or ‘re-enactments’, or the reopening of
the Richmond Barracks etc. There will
be a book on women in the Rising and
No celebration of all the artists who
were involved in .
The last meeting of the Arts SPC col-
lapsed into farce after I queried why
DCC was paying a large amount of rent
to the Ilac Centre. I also wanted to find
out why DCC were acquiring expensive
art when they had nowhere to put it?
And also, why they were building a fake
s-themed tenement museum expe-
rience in Henrietta Street in a perfectly
restored and habitable house when
there were homeless families living in
appalling inhuman conditions that
could easily have been accommodated
there instead.
The citizens of the city are, I believe,
being seriously let down by the dysfunc-
tionality of this Arts SPC which
comprises representatives from outside
bodies such as the Dublin Theatre Festi-
val, represented by Willie White, the
Little Museum of Dublin represented by
Simon O’Connor, the National Council
for the Blind represented by Gerry Kerr,
the Community Forum represented by
Kristina McElroy and the Irish Sports
Council represented by Maurice Ahern.
When I expressed my frustration and
my intention to resign after six years of
service they did sincerely ask me to
reconsider, but this isn’t possible.
I will continue to do my work. I will
continue to attend Arts SPC meetings,
though not as a member, and I will con-
tinue to question officials and others but
I’m afraid the SPC and its chair are going
to have to work very hard to regain my
condence and trust. •
Any area
offering a bit
of ould art gets
designated
a cultural
cluster, an
emerging arts
district or a
hub
“
Parnell Square Plan:
more imagination and
democracy, needed
