Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 May 2023
47. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media if she is going to request a further increase in the proportion of GDP that is spent on arts and culture in the forthcoming budget to progress towards the EU average of 0.6%; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23583/23]
View answerEurostat as 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). 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.
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 2021 in February 2023. 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.
In 2021, 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.
As part of the Budgetary process, I will continue to make the case for increases in all of the areas within my portfolio of responsibilities.
