If the Arts Council took one message away from an Arts Planning Forum in Limerick on Friday it was surely this: "What we're about is art, art, art."
These words were those of Mr Johnny Hanrahan of Meridian Theatre Company in Cork, but they were repeated and amplified again and again by a vocal group at the meeting, backed by thunderous applause.
They might seem to state the obvious, but not any more. The Minister for the Arts, Ms de Valera, has declared as her priorities access to the arts, the arts and the disabled, and the Irish language and the arts, and these concerns are reflected in the make-up of the Arts Council she appointed last week.
These agendas were built into the structure of the day-long meeting between the Arts Council staff and more than 200 people from the arts community.
Mr Hanrahan led the charge against the direction of the meeting, saying the Arts Council was allowing the Minister to set the agenda for the next Arts Plan. He was backed up by another in the group, Mr Declan Gorman of Upstate Theatre Company in Drogheda. The two soon became known as "the usual suspects".
Mr Gorman said the Arts Council was "in danger of missing the forest for the trees". He went on: "Instead of being politically correct, let's be just modern about the world around us."
Linked to this concern was a new strength of resistance to the Arts Council's seeming lack of full independence from the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands.
"Who is making art policy in Ireland?" one delegate challenged. "Is it the money - that is, the Department - or is it the Council?"
The Arts Plan is being evaluated for the Minister by the economic management evaluators, Coopers and Lybrand with Indecon. Mr Alan Gray of Indecon said he felt the question was being asked of him: "Are you, or were you ever, an economist?"
Mr Fintan O'Toole, an Irish Times journalist currently working with the New York Daily News, managed the telepathic feat of giving a paper, by live video link from New York, which both stimulated and amplified the morning's discussion.
He drew a picture of an Ireland in which all certainty about its cultural identity had been lost, just as relatively serious arts funding had come on stream for the first time. Catholicism was now divided, and nationalism as we knew it was dead since Good Friday.
"This is now a society in which money talks without interruption," he said.
There were repeated calls for regular, sectoral meetings between the Arts Council and the art community. Mr Martin Drury of the Ark Children's Cultural Centre criticised the manner in which the council was appointed, all at once and at a very bad time, considering the fast-approaching deadline for the presentation of the new plan to Government.
He proposed that the Minister change the legislation so that the members be appointed "on a rolling basis".