The Per Cent for Art Scheme provides the most basic level of interaction between the public and the arts.

The radical legislation introduced formally in 1997 ensures that at least 1 per cent of every government construction budget is given over to the creation of an original artwork to be exhibited in the context of the built environment.

The idea behind Per Cent for Art is to promote collaboration between an artist and a community to "make an impact and create lasting memories", as former minister for the arts John O'Donoghue put it.

The initiative has seen thousands of original artworks created in both traditional and experimental mediums. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council (DLRCC) is currently commissioning its first major Per Cent for Art project, the theme of which, "place and identity", reflects the link between public art and local communities. Carolyn Brown, arts officer with the council, says the commission shows DLRCC's "belief in the distinctive contribution the make to the quality of life of the county and its citizens". The Per Cent for Art scheme "is truly democratic and fully inclusive", she adds, because it "enables the Irish public to experience a diversity of contemporary art" in a way that is "freely accessible in their everyday life".

However, as Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, public art adviser on the 2004 Per Cent for Art council, warned in his report on the scheme's work, "there can be no public art without an engaged and responsive public". As the 2006 report, The Public and the Arts, found that only 55 per cent of those surveyed had stopped to look at art in a public place in the previous 12 months, perhaps it is the participatory arts projects funded by the Per Cent for Art scheme - though selective in their interaction with communities - that have the potential for the greatest impact.

The move in recent times away from the creation of site-specific art objects, such as public sculptures, towards work that both represents and involves a community seems to confirm this. Recent Per Cent for Art commissions reflect this increased interest in involving the community in art initiatives.

For John Kindness, commissioned by Ballymun's Breaking Ground project, this was large-scale mural portraits of individual community members. For composer Elaine Agnew, it was a series of workshops and a final performance with Wexford schoolchildren. For writer Dermot Bolger, it is a series of poems written in the voices of commuters travelling through south Dublin, which are currently being displayed in strategic sites all over the county.

Such developments suggest that is through the fusion of the arts with the social fabric that the greatest potential for public engagement with the arts lies.