Vol. 479 No. 2
9 Miss de Valera asked the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht the proposals, if any, he has to stop the loss of Irish art through international sales; if he will mandate his representatives to purchase major works at the auctions of major Irish art at Christies and Sotheby's in two weeks from 13 May 1997; and if he will ensure there will not be further losses such as the James Connolly letters. [12665/97]
The issue of the sale of Irish art is complex. On the one hand, while it can be argued that the sale of major paintings to buyers outside Ireland constitutes a loss to the country, it can equally be argued that the nature of the international art investment market serves to draw attention to the great talent of visual artists from this country and that many purchases at international sales of Irish art are by Irish-based collectors.
With regard to the specific auctions on 21 and 22 May 1997, with works to be auctioned by Christies and Sotheby's, it is not a matter for me as Minister to mandate people to purchase major works of art. The cultural institutions under my aegis act autonomously in acquiring items for their collections. It is a matter for those bodies to decide on priorities within their acquisitions budget and their priorities between acquisitions and other needs. They establish the figure that is available every year. In the case of the Connolly papers to which the Deputy referred and which were auctioned last year, the National Library bid for the papers up to a level it considered appropriate to their value but was not prepared to pay a sum in excess of what it believed to be a reasonable price.
With regard to the sales referred to by the Deputy, the National Gallery is the main institution under my aegis which will be considering whether it will participate. Even if I were aware that an institution under my aegis had the intention of participating in a particular auction for a particular item, I would not consider it desirable to comment given the possible effect on prices if it became known that an institution was bidding.
I appreciate that in approaching the issue of acquisition generally the institutions under my aegis are constrained by the funding available to them from the Exchequer and from other sources. As I have said on many previous occasions, I am not satisfied these institutions have sufficient resources, financial and staffing, to play the full part they could and should be playing in Irish life. While I have been able to provide significant increases in the Exchequer funding since becoming Minister, which helps in developing their programmes including acquisitions, this was from a very low base and funding is still not at a satisfactory level.
In order to further facilitate major acquisitions by the institutions this Government introduced a provision in the 1995 Finance Act permitting tax relief on donation of important cultural objects to our main collecting institutions. This provision is now worth £750,000 in a calendar year. The initiative has been successful in attracting a number of important gifts, including the archives of the great Irish painter, Jack B. Yeats, and the original architectural drawings of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I hope to see this generous tax relief provision continue to be availed of by donors now and in the years ahead.
I am concerned to ensure key items that are crucial to our heritage are kept in Ireland. For this reason the Cultural Institutions Act, 1997, provides for the establishment of a register of key cultural items. Export of these items can be prohibited when they have been in public care for a certain period or deferred for up to one year when the items are in private custody. This period would allow time to negotiate their purchase if considered desirable. Of course, as was discussed during the Oireachtas debates on this Act, any protective measures must balance private property rights and the public interest.
Is it not disingenuous to say our national cultural institutions are independent and have their own acquisitions budgets? In his reply the Minister admitted that only the Exchequer and political will can ensure such acquisitions budgets are at the disposal of those institutions. At present, only £250,000 is available to our cultural institutions for acquisitions and restoration and about £200,000 of that sum is earmarked for the National Gallery. This causes great concern when the institutions are confronted with the moneys available to other institutions and individuals at auctions held by Sothebys and Christies. Will the Minister encourage such auctions to be held in Ireland as this might help raise awareness of and interest in our heritage?
There has been an increase in awareness in Ireland of our heritage. It was assisted by the passing of the Heritage Act and the inclusion in that legislation of an educational role. The previous advisory heritage council was given a mandate to be involved in education and explaining heritage. That was good. There is a general sensibility of the importance of our heritage in different ways, although I would not claim competence as Minister in second guessing the acquisitions committee of the National Gallery. I am not an expert in the visual arts and do not pretend to be.
I said the funding had moved from a low base. That base was £116,000 in 1993. I could have said the increase to £257,000 represented an increase of 121 per cent but I preferred to tell the House that the baselines with which I started were excessively low. One needs to make a qualitative improvement and to be careful. The purpose of the National Cultural Institutions Act, 1996 was to establish autonomy and ultimately whoever is Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht can strengthen the budget for the arts.
I do not want to be controversial during this rather special Question Time, but at a time when I was out of the Department, in 1994, the allocation for the Arts Council was cut by 13 per cent, the same percentage by which I increased it for 1996-7. I hope whoever is Minister in future will receive the support of everyone in the House in making dramatic increases in provisions, including the acquisitions budget.
Although the National Cultural Institutions Act was a welcome one in that it gave us an opportunity to look at our institutions to see how we could improve the structures, would the Minister not agree that talking about structures is one thing and can be helpful, but is of very little use if there is no funding to go with the structures?
As to the specific items that will be considered at the upcoming auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's, the eight paintings and, particularly, the Harry Clarke windows, I am aware the Minister has a particular interest in them and, like everybody else in this House, understands their value to our heritage. It would be wonderful if the State were in a position to acquire these nine panels. Perhaps the Minister would ensure that moneys will be made available by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in order that we should not lose this important part of our heritage.
One should never have to choose between good legislation and making provision. The legislation dealing with all of these institutions was archaic, the institutional procedures were out of date and the baselines in funding were unrealistically low. I will not waste anybody's time by speaking of the state in which I inherited them. On a previous occasion I recall the Heritage Council identifying very important furniture and not having sufficient resources to purchase it at auction. It was by a combination of effort on the part of the Office of Public Works, the Heritage Council and other bodies, including my Department, that eventually a sum was put together which, by effective bidding at the auction, managed to secure the work. I can assure the Deputy that the institutions are aware of the significance of the objects that are for auction and I would be sympathetic to repeating the previous exercise if it were likely to be successful and of assistance to the institutions concerned. It would be inappropriate for me to say more than that.
