Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 May 2023
334. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the estimated 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. [24030/23]
View answerArriving at meaningful comparisons for international expenditure is challenging for a number of reasons. As has been acknowledged by my colleague the Minister for Finance, and as is generally acknowledged, as one of the most globally-integrated economies in the world, and with a large foreign owned footprint, interpreting conventional measures of economic activity such as GDP is especially challenging in an Irish context. In addition, there are limited robust methodologies for international comparisons of Government expenditure on culture.
Eurostat 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 sub-class of Cultural Services incorporates the arts. 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%.
There has been sustained and significant growth in public expenditure to support arts and culture under the current Government and I will look to sustain and where possible increase that support in the context of the forthcoming Budget Estimates process.
