Cork 2005: The rumours still circling around events scheduled for Cork's term as European Capital of Culture have less to do with the Cork 2005 organisation than with the city itself, writes Mary Leland.

When the city council won the title there was a strong expectation that those charged with building an ambitious programme would find the official €13.5 million funding from the council and EU, supplemented by local interests.

Despite supportive partnerships with Heineken, AIB, RTÉ and Thos Crosbie Holdings, the dismaying outcome shows just how wide is the gap between those whose riches have been carved from the city's development - itself enhanced by the European designation - and a sense of civic obligation.

The image of city manager Joe Gavin having once again to make a public appeal to what he calls "the major players" in the city for financial support is a shameful reflection not just on Cork 2005's fundraising results but on Cork and its many magnates.

His recent presentation to the city council explained that while the council had provided direct cash aid of €3.17 million to Cork 2005, underwriting a further €3.17 million until the project reached a value of €12.68 million, the current financial situation was that the board of 2005 had authorised cash expenditure of €15.5 million, while income received and committed stands at €13.5 million.

Fund-raising efforts were continuing in the hope that companies and individuals approached over the coming weeks for financial support would be generous, but the council agreed in the meantime to reinstate the €3.17 million underwriting agreement up to the point where the income of the company reaches €15.5 million.

He made it clear that this help was needed in order to continue the delivery of scheduled programmes and the furtherance of others.

In other words, although, for example, the contract for the anticipated second strand of the Music Migrations programme will not be signed until the necessary finance is secure, it is not so much the John Spillanes and friends who have been left outside the loop of Cork 2005 (although they feel they have been ignored), as the financial concerns and companies operating within the city.

Some individuals have been content to do their own thing, as in the private enterprises behind the Andrea Bocelli concert in July, or the Bowen Group's mounting of Airgeadóir at the Crawford Gallery (in which Cork 2005 is involved).

But even the news that solicitor Charlie Hennessy, chairman of the directors of NCAD and long-term chairman of the Cork Opera House and Cork Film Festival, has been appointed as the Irish member of the selection jury for the European Capital of Culture 2009, cannot disguise the commercial indifference to the year.

It is a strange paradox: never have so many cranes swung so aggressively over the city's skyline; never has there been so strong and so visible an aura of new wealth, and never has Cork achieved so high a European profile as in this year. The designation itself could be - and certainly the city manager intended it to be - a factor in the city's continuing growth. Yet the speculators and entrepreneurs - one might even say the profiteers - of Cork have turned their back on it.

From the beginning of the 2005 programme plans, it was obvious that the strongest element should be the existing practitioners, whose work could be used as a foundation on which to build events likely to catch the public imagination.

In most cases, however, these have been assisted only to enhance what they already offer, and to niche audiences at that, so that the great success of the European Quartet Week can't be read as having anything much to do with the immediate sell-out (although the promoters won't say just how many tickets actually went on sale) of the 10,000-seat Andrea Bocelli concert.

In an ideal capital of culture world, that concert would be free, thus guaranteeing the public "feel-good" factor now demonstrably missing.