On November 18th, smack bang in the middle of the general-election campaign, I chaired a hustings organised by the National Campaign for the Arts on the culture policies of the various parties.
As political debates go it was an unusual affair, due to the degree of unamity on display. Every single political representative sitting on the stage of the Gate Theatre, from Fine Gael to People Before Profit, praised the achievements of Catherine Martin, of the Green Party, over her 4½ years as minister for culture. Martin herself was applauded repeatedly and enthusiastically by an audience mostly composed of artists, performers and culture workers. I’d never seen anything like it.
Twelve days later Martin lost her seat.
Media coverage of her ministerial career has tended to focus on Martin’s handling of the crisis at RTÉ, during which she was deemed to have been too hands-off, culminating in the fractious departure of the RTÉ chairwoman, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, and ultimately with the announcement of a pantomime-horse solution to the question of public-service media funding (a solution she clearly did not herself support). Those issues will continue to be a thorn in the side of future governments, whatever their political hue.
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But the narcissistic media focus on RTÉ obscured the fact that Martin has been the most consequential minister for culture since Michael D Higgins, 30 years ago.
When I mention this to some people they snort that of course Martin was popular; she delivered the gravy. She was just another member of a profligate government determined to buy off voters with windfall corporation-tax revenue.
This is a pretty profound misunderstanding of what happened. Yes, Martin did take the opportunity offered by the Covid crisis to implement a step change in State suport for the arts. She successfully translated temporary emergency supports that were provided during lockdown into a permanent, higher allocation to the Arts Council and other bodies. When she entered office, in 2020, the council’s annual funding was €80 million. This year the figure is €140 million. Overall, funding has doubled since 2017.
But rather than using Covid as a cover for a slush fund, Martin was actually putting into effect the promises made though not delivered by her predecessors to address Ireland’s woeful shortfall when it comes to supporting cultural activity. That shortfall had been explicitly acknowledged by Leo Varadkar in his 2017 campaign to become leader of Fine Gael and taoiseach. He had been supported by the minister for finance at the time, Paschal Donohoe. Varadkar, Donohoe and the rest of that government committed to doubling arts funding by 2025. But by the time of the 2020 election they were already well behind on the schedule required to achieve that goal. Martin fixed the problem of overpromising and underdelivering that has plagued arts policy in Ireland for decades.
If, as seems likely, the next government is composed of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with Independent support, then the ministerial portfolio is almost certain to revert to one of those two parties. And if history is our guide, that is an underwhelming prospect. Between Higgins’s departure, in 1997, and Martin’s arrival the job was filled by a succession of middle-ranking Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians who left little trace. Is it a coincidence that the only truly transformative ministers for culture since the job became a full cabinet position, in 1992, were members of neither? Probably not.
Whoever the next minister is, they will be faced with one immediate challenge. The pilot phase of the innovative Basic Income for the Arts scheme, which Martin launched three years ago, is due to wind down by the end of 2025. At the Gate hustings, every politician present, including those from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, committed to renewing and continuing it. But a number of complex questions arise about how the scheme should operate into the future that will require political nous and a clear command of the issues to address.
Amid all the sweetness and light on the theatre’s stage, there was one telling moment when Martin became visibly irritated by all the praise coming from her coalition partners. She told the audience that she had to “fight and fight” the same parties at cabinet for the policies they were now attempting to take credit for. One couldn’t help wondering whether a little more of that visible anger might have saved a few more Green seats on election day. Or whether, without a similarly forceful advocate fighting for culture at the next cabinet table, the sector will once again be an afterthought at best.
