Ireland/ 6. Financing of culture  

6.1 Short overview

While the past decade has seen significant increases in the funding of the arts in Ireland, the Irish economic crisis has led to significant drops in funding across the cultural sector from 2009 onwards (see chapter 4.1 for details).

Table 2:     Arts Council funding, 1998-2012

Source:    Department of Arts,  Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

Arts Council funding comes from the Exchequer and the National Lottery.  (Under section 8 of the National Lottery Act 1986, the proceeds of the National Lottery are paid into the Central Fund of the Exchequer and therefore National Lottery funding is one of the constituents of Exchequer funding. The apportionment of National Lottery funding to various lines of voted expenditure is the responsibility of the Minister of Public Expenditure and Reform.)

The total amount received from the Lottery from 2001-2006 was EUR 93.8 million, representing 27.7% of total funding to the Arts Council.

Local government expenditure on the arts, and related issues, are discussed in chapter 3.2. The Arts Council reported a total net expenditure on the arts by local authorities of EUR 28.5 million in 2011 – a reduction of 27% on the 2010 spend of EUR 39.3 million.

A Deloitte (2008) survey of Irish arts and cultural institutions found that 12% of their annual turnover came from private and corporate sponsorship. According to Arts and Business (2009), this is about equal to UK private giving (at 13%) but lower than in the US (at around 40%).

The share of the state budget allocated to culture in 2011 was 0.4%.

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