Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 26 July 2022
599. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the full year cost of increasing spending on the arts to the EU average of 0.6% of GDP; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41428/22]
View answerThere are limited robust methodologies for international comparisons of Government expenditure on culture. Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, collects data on general government expenditure by economic function using an international Classification of the Functions of Government (CoFoG).
COFOG was designed by the United Nations in the 1970s and Eurostat, applies a version of COFOG developed by the OECD. Eurostat ensures the standardisation of methodologies across Member States as well as validating and disseminating the data.
Under the system, public functions are divided into ten classes, which are further broken down into subclasses. The 8th class is Recreation, culture and religion . It has six subclasses as follows:-
08 - Recreation, culture and religion
- 08.1 - Recreational and sporting services
- 08.2 - Cultural services
- 08.3 - Broadcasting and publishing services
- 08.4 - Religious and other community services
- 08.5 - R&D Recreation, culture and religion
- 08.6 - Recreation, culture and religion n.e.c. (not elsewhere classified)
While Class 8 as a whole is too broad to give any useful comparisons, the second and third sub-classes - 08.2 Cultural Services and 08.3 Broadcasting and publishing services - are of interest when comparing expenditure on the arts. New COFOG figures are published once a year in Spring for the penultimate complete calendar year. Eurostat published figures for 2020 on 22 February 2022. In each Sub-class, three sets of data are provided for each Member state and the EU average; amount of public expenditure, its percentage of total public expenditure and its percentage of GDP. The table below give the 2020 figures for Ireland along with the EU average.
|
08 Recreation Culture & Religion |
Expenditure |
% of GDP |
% of GDP |
% of total |
expenditure |
|
Subclass 2020 |
Ireland |
Ireland |
EU |
Ireland |
EU |
|
08.2 Cultural Services |
€793m |
0.2 |
0.5 |
0.8 |
1.0 |
|
08.3 Broadcasting & Publishing Services |
€683m |
0.2 |
0.2 |
0.7 |
0.4 |
In 2020, Ireland's expenditure on cultural services totalled 0.8% of total public expenditure compared with the EU average of 1%, while expenditure on broadcasting and publishing services at 0.7% exceeded the EU average of 0.4%. As a % GDP, the figures are 0.2% and 0.5% for cultural services while they are equal at 0.2% for broadcasting and publishing services.
