A little bit bulky, but the facts as I see them.


The Phoenix December 6th 2002

LABHRÁS Ó MURCHÚ
Pillars of Society

IT IS not often that the subject of traditional Irish music and dancing achieves more than a passing reference in the Dublin media but the debate on the current Arts Bill - focusing on the creation of a standing committee outside the Arts Council with funding power - has generated plenty of column inches and dominated large swathes of The Irish Times letters page. At the heart of this debate is Senator Labhras Ó Murchú, the all-powerful director general of the traditional music body, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (CCE). If the Bill is passed in its current format, Ó Murchú will have not only achieved a notable victory over his old enemies on the Arts Council but will also be in a position to tap into a new source of public funding. Not many are betting against him at this stage given his good relationship with Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue.

Section 21 of the Arts Bill 2002 states that the Arts Council "shall establish three standing committees of which one shall assist and advise on matters relating to traditional arts". In each case the Minister will appoint the chair and two members of the five-member committee but alone of the three committees, the one dealing with the traditional Irish arts "shall make recommendations to the Council in relation to the advance of to any person relating to traditional Irish arts".

The apoplexy at Merrion Square over this inclusion in the Bill is hard to overestimate. For the first time, it is proposed that the power to allocate funding is taken out of the hands of the Council and the question is, if such a committee can do this work, why have an Arts Council at all? Why not just have six or ten standing committees? Given his frosty relationship with the Council, Labhras Ó Murchú will be enjoying the discomfort on Merrion Square.

THE SPLIT
Meanwhile, the battle of the Arts Bill began in earnest last week when the select committee chaired by Cecelia Keaveney   received submissions from various interested parties, including CCE. The only issue on the agenda was Section 21 and the level   of   division within the arts community was clearly evident.   Letters to   The Irish   Times   in recent weeks have also highlighted the split with Arts Council clients such as the Contemporary Music Centre and the Willie Clancy Summer School expressing    their opposition to the proposal. Even the Arts Council itself stepped into the fray when Dermot McLaughlin questioned CCE's need for funding from Merrion Square.

Meanwhile, Ó Murchú and his organisation have been lobbying TDs and senators directly with deputies receiving a letter referring to "a covert campaign launched against the provisions of the Bill that favour the traditional arts". This is actually looking like a rather even battle. While the Arts Council has a lot of muscle courtesy of its €44 million in EU annual funding and the powers of patronage this carries, CCE is a very large organisation and in Ó Murchú it has a man on the inside. Indeed, with his wife, Una Ó Murchú - the director of the Brú Ború traditional music centre in Cashel - now sitting on the Arts Council herself, it could be argued that CCE has a presence on both sides of this particular fence .

What is most remarkable about the manner in which Ó Murchú got the standing committee on traditional arts inserted into the Bill - and there is no argument that he is the man responsible - is that this was thought to be dead and buried. The Comhaltas supremo had originally floated the idea of a sort of separate Traditional Arts Council in a report for the Joint Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language which he had prepared as its rapporteur. This controversial report - the first ever on traditional Irish music - was passed by the committee only to run into serious flak when it emerged that apart from CCÉ, no other body was mentioned by Ó Murchú. The Arts Council was particularly animated over the recommendation for an outside body to promote the traditional arts.

In an unprecedented move, the Oireachtas Committee was forced to request submissions from outside on the report (described in the CCÉ newsletter, Treoir, as "comprehensive") after it had been published and the document subsequently gathered dust. The Merrion Square Mafia breathed a sigh of relief only for the issue to arise again in 2001 when the Department of Arts sought submissions on Síle Dev's proposed new Arts legislation.

The vast bulk of these submissions concerned the traditional arts but Theo Dorgan - who was brought in by the Minister to analyse the various submissions - noted that the arguments in favour of the traditional arts council "can be considered a single point of view expressed by a multitude of people acting in concert" (ie, a CCE campaign). More interestingly, the Department of the Taoiseach stated that such a body would be "deeply regressive" and would "both ghettoise and patronise practitioners" (see The Phoenix 16/3/01).

So that was that? Not quite. When the new Arts Bill was drafted, the Arts Council's worst fears were realised. A committee with funding powers for the traditional arts had suddenly materialised, controlled not by Merrion Square but by Ministerial appointees. Patricia Quinn et al viewed this a way for CCE to get on the arts funding gravy train to complement its income from the Department of Gaeltacht, which is supposed to be ring-fenced for promoting the Irish language.

This year CCE got €500,000 from this source and, indeed, Ó Murchú has proved very effective at tapping the public purse and is a consistent recipient of Cultural Relations Committee funding for US events. Also, Brú Ború in Cashel -one of a number of Comhaltas centres around the country - managed to land no less than €1.5 million from Bord Fáilte to build an underground theatre. There was a further €650,000 from the Department of Arts last year for this project which was officially opened by Síle Dev.

FUNDING
However, relations with Merrion Square are very poor and CCÉ has never been able to get funding from the Arts Council. Not surprisingly perhaps, Comhaltas did bung in a couple of unsuccessful applications (for around €300,000) in 1998 and 1999 - immediately after Una Ó Murchú was appointed to the Council by Síle Dev.

This week the Arts Council will be the last body to address the select committee on the Arts Bill and it will have to be an impressive performance. As it stands, the word is that Senator Ó Murchú has edged ahead and his access to John O'Donoghue gives him further leverage in the coming months, with the Bill due to be finally passed by March.

Ó Murchú (born Larry Murphy in 1939, he changed his name by deed poll in the 1950s) is not the typical Fianna Failer although to Dublin 4 he represents all that is awful about the Soldiers of Destiny, with his CCE organisation and its gaelgeoirí jigging and reeling at the crossroads perceived as a glorified Fianna Fail network. However, within the party, Ó Murchú is viewed with suspicion and certainly he was nowhere to be seen on the favoured list of Seanad candidates circulated by Ray MacSharry's committee before the recent election. Along with the likes of Paschal Mooney, Dan Kiely and Camillus Glynn, Ó Murchú and the so-called old guard were earmarked for the chop by FF HQ.

Things didn't work out that way, however, and the CCE supremo was re-elected onto the Cultural and Educational Panel on the 14th count - ahead of Brian Hayes, Noel Coonan and Ann Ormonde. Indeed the poll topper on that panel - Paschal Mooney - and
Ó Murchú were not even nominated by FF. Mooney's name was put forward by the Association of Libraries while Ó Murchú was the not so surprising choice of CCE.

Since the election, Ó Murchú has been made spokesman on Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and added to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sport and Tourism, the Seanad Committee on Procedure and Privilege as well as the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. While he is best known for his obsession with Irish traditional arts, the Cashel senator has spoken out on a range of contentious issues, most recently the Colombia Three. He is also centrally involved with the creation of a new body, the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, set up last month to take on the likes of Michael Smith's An Taisce and help push for a more populated countryside (ie, one-off housing).

In his time Ó Murchú has also called for support for the likes of Michelle de Brúin -"one of our national treasures" - and Roisin McAliskey. He also spends his time denouncing the likes of comedian Tommy Tiernan for "blasphemy" (after a Late Late Show performance) and complaining about the McDonald's restaurant chain's "insult" to the memory of Peig Sayers in a TV advert a couple of years ago: "I can only suggest that it is the product of a sick mind. No right-thinking Irish person should accept it".

But above all else, Labhras Ó Murchú uses the Seanad to push forward CCE policies. CCE is his bread and butter and he is the permanent (since 1968) full-time director general of the organisation. As top dog and plenipotentiary, there are few figures who hold such power in any organisation. Not only does Ó Murchú hold the post of director general until whenever he decides to call it a day but he is also the CCE spokesman on everything, the editor of its quarterly journal, Treoir, and one of the three permanent trustees in whom CCE's various properties are vested, including the very valuable and impressive headquarters on Belgrave Square in Monkstown. In the past, the senator has also held the elected post of President General of CCE.

PROFITS OF €1.5 MILLION
Comhaltas regularly claims to have 400 branches even if some of these are very small indeed. Nevertheless, the organisation is a very successful one and although the accounts are not published, Goldhawk can reveal that there were accumulated profits of €1.5 million at the end of last year. "Wages, pension, travel and subsistence" amounted to €550,000 (including a top-up sum for pensions). The biggest single element here would be Ó Murchú's salary although the senator refused to elucidate Goldhawk on the amount he takes out of his organisation every year. Ó Murchú's right-hand man in Comhaltas is Seamus Mac Mathuna - hubby of anti-abortion firebrand, Una, and father of Youth Defence's Niamh Nic Mhatuna. The director general himself is also an outspoken anti-abortionist, both in the Seanad and in the pages of Treoir.

Ó Murchú's ability to use the Seanad to push the interests of CCE was never clearer than with the passage of the Copyright Bill in 1999 which was initially opposed by the senator despite the fact that the Government was pushing it through. In this case, he put Comhaltas before FF but in a most Machiavellian manner, managed to end up onside at the end of the day after tying up a very unusual deal with the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) whereby CCE was issued a blanket licence "to cover all official
Comhaltas functions".

The Letter of Agreement also stated that IMRO would fund CCE to the tune of €63,500 annually and also provided for an annual €32,000 subvention for the Brú Ború venue run by Ó Murchú's wife, Una. No other CCE centre was mentioned.

In return, CCE agreed "to support IMRO's submission to the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment in relation to the proposed Copyright Bill". In other words, Ó Murchú did a U-turn on his stance on the Bill but only when he protected CCE from the clutches of IMRO. Clearly, other traditional music bodies - outsiders in his eyes - could fend for themselves.

This deal suggests that it is very foolish to underestimate Ó Murchú's ability to get what he wants. He has the ear of the Minister and a formidable public relations machine going head to head with the Arts Council, which has everything to lose. With John O'Donoghue also on side, the senator is already preparing to draw up his list of nominees for the standing committee that will examine his inevitable funding application. What all this could mean for the future of the slimmed down Arts Council is, however, far from clear.

Jim Carroll