Arts and Sport Expenditure Since 2008

By John Considine

Early last month a controversy raged about the appointment of John McNulty to the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) (a sample of the commentary can be found here).  The Marian Finucane Show of October 5th began with a discussion of the issue.  The first guest to speak on the issue was artist Robert Ballagh (it is worth listening to the first 6 minutes of the show here).  Ballagh described much of the coverage as verbiage and decided to introduce some "facts" into the debate.  Specifically he explained how the budget of the Arts Council budget fell from €85m in 2008 to €56m in 2014.  A reference is also make to a Sunday Independent piece by Emer O'Kelly that suggested the Departments of Arts and Sports are not a high priority for the government.  In this context it is worth looking at the Exchequer funding of the Arts and Sport since 2008.

The figure above outlines the changes in Exchequer expenditure under particular votes (line items of expenditure).  The figure supports the statements made on the Marian Finucane Show.  All voted Exchequer expenditure declined from its 2008 base.  However, Arts expenditure suffered a greater decline.  Arts expenditure declined by approximately 40%.  The standout feature of the above figure is how sport funding collapsed.

Two important points should be made about the above table.  First, the use of 2008 as a base year is ideal for anyone seeking to highlight the decline in Exchequer expenditure as it represented the beginning of the fiscal adjustment in Ireland.  Second, the fiscal adjustment fell relatively more on capital expenditure.  This helps explain the greater decline in sport expenditure (plus the fact that the majority of capital expenditure on the Aviva stadium occurred in 2008).  Focusing on non-capital (aka current) expenditure it seems that the Arts and Sport continued to do relatively poorly.  This is illustrated in the figure below.