Following our update on Budget 2012 on 7 December, some additional figures have come to light. The following table shows the cuts in 2011 vs. 2010 and also 2012 vs. 2011 and also how these cuts look over two years. 
 

Notes: All € figures refer to thousands. Culture Ireland had an additional one-off grant of €3 million to run Imagine Ireland in 2011. The National Gallery is currently undergoing refurbishment and while it remains open there is a significant impact on its public programme and events. 

There was some confusion over the level of cut to the Arts Council as Minister Deenihan mentioned a cut of 2% rather than 3% in his speech in the Dail. The 2% cut refers to the Arts Council current budget only which is going from €64,317,000 in 2011 to €63,100,000 in 2012. The Arts Council's capital budget on the other hand  is dropping by 83% from €850,000 in 2011 to €141,000 in 2012. The above table shows current and capital combined and the result is that the overall cut to the Arts Council is 3%. The Arts Council reaction is here.

Similarly, he spoke of a 4% increase for the Irish Film Board. This increase refers to the Film Board's current budget which is going from €2,431,000 in 2011 to €2,540,000 in 2012. Crucially, though the Film Board's capital budget is decreasing by 18% going from €16,000,000 in 2011 to €13,150,000 in 2012. The above table shows current and capital combined and the result is that the overall cut to the Film Board is 15%. You can read their reaction here. You can have a look at full figures on the Department site. 

Finally thank you so much to all of you who have written to us since Wednesday evening. We are always happy to hear from you all and it's only through working together that we can continue to make a coherent case for the Arts. We will be back in touch in January with news on our plans and strategy for 2012. In the meantime, hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and new year and thanks again for all the support in 2011 - it means a lot.

First of all we want to say well done. We achieved a lot this year.   

• We held General & Presidential Election hustings
• We met 70% of newly elected TDs in a nationwide 'Meet and Greet'
• We lobbied Ministers
• We briefed Senators
• We lobbied the City and County Managers Association 
• We met the Arts Council & the Local Authority Arts Officers Association
• We liaised with the Department of Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht
• We held regional meetings to brief NCFA supporters in Limerick, Cork & Dublin 
• We also raised funds, refreshed our goals, refined our vision for next year and are putting in place a new structure for the NCFA 
• Thanks to those of you who helped make this happen. You have helped the arts in Ireland. 

The Department changed from Tourism, Culture and Sport in 2010, to Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht this year. This means straight year-on-year comparisons to the Department are not straightforward. 

National arts funding will be down in 2012. The impact on individual artists and organisations won't be known until next year when the Arts Council, Film Board, Culture etc. announce their decisons.  We won't know how much local authority arts funding is cut by until early next year.On the positive side, it looks like Minister Jimmy Deenihan made a good case and things are not as bad as feared. 

Here's the initial news we have about the Budget and the arts:  

Gross funding for the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht 
This will be €266.997m in 2012 with an allocation for current expenditure of €223.997m and a capital allocation of €43m. A further €8.558m (€7.558m in current funding and €1m in capital funding) is provided through the National Gallery.        

Funding for Arts Culture & Film
In his Dail speech this evening, Minister Deenihan said "The key focus for the arts and culture sector is to protect jobs and stimulate creativity right across the country.  With this in mind, some €129.552m, or 49% of my Department's resources, is being allocated in 2012 to Arts, Culture and Film programme area. This will hugely, complement the significant investment in arts infrastructure in recent years. My priority now is to ensure that resources are made available to support the operation of those facilities."          

Arts Capital Funding
Was €32 million. In 2012 it will be €21 million - a cut of 34%. The Irish Film board gets the bulk of this money as their funding is classed as 'capital investment' rather than current. In 2012 they will get 13.2 million of the arts capital budget of €21 million.          

Arts Current Funding
Was €124.023 million. (This includes all arts budget lines including the National Gallery). In 2012 it is down to €117.035 million - a cut of 6%.         

Arts Council funding
Will be EUR 63.1m in 2012 as opposed to EUR65.16 in 2011 so a cut of 3%. This is a much better result than feared. In his speech tonight, Minister Deenihan said "my intention is to facilitate the Council to maintain its support to over 50 venues, approximately 200 festivals and 400 arts organisations. In this way, the Council will support employment in communities across the country, both directly through funding artists and organisations and indirectly in the tourism sector and the wider economy."    

Irish Film Board
As noted above capital funding is being scaled back. However, an increase of 4% on the current side will bring Irish Film Board current funding from EUR2.43 in 2011 to EUR2.54 in 2012. Interestingly, Minister Deenihan pointed out in his speech "It is important to remember that for every €1 of IFB investment close to €10 is generated in the economy".

At time of sending this email, figures for Culture Ireland and the National Cultural Institutions are not available. We understand that they will be on the Department's website tomorrow and we will provide a full analysis of these by Friday morning. Other, wider, Budget changes will affect us too. For example, the rise in VAT will have an impact because so many arts organisations are not registered for VAT and cannot claim it back and changes to the costs of redundancy payments may impact too. It is worth noting that for the first time, the Department published estimates of savings that need to made in 2013 & 2014. These are indicative only but are very worrying. Arts and culture will face additional cuts of €5 million in 2013 and €7 million in 2014. Our task in 2012 is to make the case for investment in arts and culture stronger than ever. 

To see the Minister's press release in full click here

On 21 November we went to the annual meeting of the Association of Local Authority Arts Officers on Co Monaghan to update them on the work of the NCFA and discuss how we might work together.  On 24 November we met the City and County Managers Association and had a very successful discusson with them. The briefing notes we gave them are available to download in the links section below.  

On Tuesday 29 November we held two meetings in the National Concert Hall. The first was for all the national umbrella and recourse organisations for the different arts forms (music, visual arts, theatre, dance, literature, film etc) and the National Cultural Institutions.  A summary of the meeting is available below.

We discussed how the new structure in 2012 will make the campaign more democratic and accountable. This file is also available below.