The Middle-Class Rip-Off'? Subsiding Culture in Contemporary Ireland

In the last few years (roughly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic) there has been a noted increase in state-led cultural funding in Ireland. Key examples include the raise in the financial allocation to the Arts Council, the introduction of the Basic Income for the Arts scheme, and increased sports capital funding. With reference to the official communication documents of these cases (so-called ‘grey literature’) and deploying the classic 1982 episode of the British sitcom Yes, Minister, ‘The Middle-Class Rip-Off,’ which pitches sports funding against support for the arts, as a satirical lens, this paper reflects on the contemporary discourse of cultural subsidies in contemporary Ireland. This cultural text is explicitly used throughout to illustrate and critique present day arts policy in Ireland. Further informed by literature on class and conceptions of ‘cultural democracy’ in cultural policy, it finds, unsurprisingly, that these documents, and contemporary cultural policy in Ireland more generally, does not justify the often-overlooked regressive nature of cultural subsidies avoiding as it does considerations of class, but instead revels in the intangible, feel good and
ambiguous nature of the sector