MARTIN CULLEN, Minister for Arts, Tourism and Sport, has said he will not scrap the artists’ exemption as proposed by the Commission on Taxation.
The commission said the exemption was “deadweight” as those who benefited from it would have been involved in artistic activity anyway. It also concluded that it was unfair.
Mr Cullen described as “nonsense” the suggestion that the exemption costs the exchequer between €36 million and €38 million every year.
He said that figure pertained to 2006, the year before a €250,000 cap was put on the exemption, and the cost to the exchequer since has been “minuscule”.
“It is really important to point out that it is a statement by Ireland about how it treasures its artistic community and what it means for our country home and abroad. It is very important that we value this,” he told presenter Vincent Woods on yesterday’s Arts Tonight programme on RTÉ Radio 1.
Mr Cullen dismissed the McCarthy report, which recommended the abolition of his department, the Irish Film Board and Culture Ireland, as a “mathematical exercise”.
“He’s [report author Colm McCarthy] not elected, he doesn’t represent people, he’s not in the fulcrum of policy formulation,” he explained.
Too many aspects of the report were drawing a line over a figure without looking at the policy that underpinned it.
The Minister said earmarking the Irish Film Board for closure was an “horrific approach”. He had fought to keep the 100 per cent tax exemption last year because it helped to generate a €150 million industry.
Both it and Culture Ireland, which promote and advance Irish arts internationally, generated “far, far greater return” for the State than the money put into it in the first place.
He did, however, say that the arts community would have to endure cutbacks like every other part of society, but he declined to be drawn on where those cuts would come. Opposition to the McCarthy proposals is growing in the artistic community. The National Campaign for the Arts has been set up to campaign against the cuts.
