Where are benefits of arts subsidies?

MARY Hanafin assured voters present at the opening of Cork Film Festival recently that she understood the necessity of subsidising the arts.

She emphasised the ‘benefits’ to the economy that such subsidisation brings. There are many who argue that subsidising the arts brings non-economic benefits to the country, though it’s hard to see how freeing artists from the need to satisfy customers improves anything. Citing economic benefits, however, is just nonsense.

If an industry needs to be subsidised to survive, then it is necessarily loss-making and destroys more resources than it creates.

So even if subsidisation creates a certain number of jobs in that industry, those jobs are economically harmful.

Add to this the productive jobs destroyed by the taxation that pays for the subsidies and Ms Hanafin’s argument becomes even weaker. She ended by saying when people around the world think of Ireland, they think of our culture. That and our deficit.

Neil Crowley

Mountview Tce

Ballyhooly Road

Cork