Why theatre sought additional revenue
The article refers to the chairman of Cork Opera House calling on the city council to convert payable loans totalling €2.79m into shares and non-payable grants. The city council passed a resolution at a meeting in May 2004 to convert €507,895 of loans to non-repayable grants and €1,428,454 of loans to share capital.
The article made no reference to this decision. Cork Opera House and Cork city council are currently in talks to progress this resolution.
The figure of €215,000 quoted in the article in relation to Arts Council funding is the figure as per the accounts. However, as was noted by executive director Gerry Barnes during the course of his speech, the Arts Council grant to Cork Opera House for the calendar year 2005 was €200,000.
Indeed for the calendar year 2004, it was €190,000.
The figure of €71,000 quoted in the article as being ‘chipped’ in by the corporate sector is only a small portion of what is actually contributed by the business community every year.
When all elements of contributions are taken into account, they total nearly €400,000 in all.
Cork Opera House is very grateful for the support and goodwill of the business community.
In quoting the Arts Council and corporate sector funding, Mr McNamee tried to work back to the loss the company would have made if this funding was not received.
I’m not sure what the benefit of this was, as it was untrue to say the company would have made such losses without the funding.
If this funding was not forthcoming or received, the company would have had to curtail its activities and simply not undertaken some of them.
The call of both the chairman and executive director during their respective speeches at the AGM was for additional revenue funding to help the company meet its depreciation and maintenance charges each year.
It is the lack of funding in these areas that has led the company to declare ‘another’ loss after depreciation this year.
Mary Fenton
Financial Controller
Cork Opera House
Emmet Place
Cork
