Slimming for the Beach

Last Wednes­day and Thurs­day (April 14 and 15) Aos­dána held its 2010 agm in the Armagh City Hotel, under the aus­pices of the Armagh City and Dis­trict Coun­cil and the North South Min­is­te­r­ial Coun­cil, which is based in Armagh.
It was the first meet­ing to be held in North­ern Ire­land (the only other agm held out­side Dublin was in Kil­timagh, Co Mayo), but the speeches at the wel­com­ing din­ner stressed that the meet­ing reflected the long-standing tra­di­tion of all Ire­land col­lab­o­ra­tion and inter­ac­tion between artists and arts organisations.

The agm was sig­nif­i­cant in other respects too, not least in the unan­i­mous vote sup­port­ing the motion seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the Res­i­den­tial Insti­tu­tions Redress Act, 2002, pro­posed by Mar­garetta D’Arcy, and sec­onded by Paula Mee­han.

The motion reads as fol­lows
With ref­er­ence to sec­tions 7 (6) and 34 of the Redress Act 2002, Aos­dána calls on the Min­is­ter for Jus­tice and/or the Attor­ney Gen­eral to con­firm that noth­ing in these sec­tions can or should be con­strued in such a way as to inhibit any truth­ful treat­ment of the sub­ject, whether fac­tual or fic­tion­alised, in mem­oirs, nov­els, short sto­ries, poetry, plays, film-scripts, etc., or in any other art form.

From the Res­i­den­tial Redress Act 2002 (deal­ing with com­pen­sa­tion to vic­tims of cler­i­cal abuse)
7 (6).– A per­son shall not pub­lish any infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing an appli­ca­tion or an award made under this Act that refers to any other per­son (includ­ing an appli­cant), rel­e­vant per­son or insti­tu­tion by name or which could rea­son­ably lead to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of any other per­son (includ­ing an appli­cant), a rel­e­vant per­son or an insti­tu­tion referred to in an appli­ca­tion made under this Act.

34.– A per­son who is guilty of an offence under sec­tions 7(6) and 28(9) shall be liable–

(a) on sum­mary con­vic­tion, to a fine not exceed­ing €3,000 (£2,362.69) or to impris­on­ment for a term not exceed­ing 6 months or both, or
(b) on con­vic­tion on indict­ment, to a fine not exceed­ing €25,000 (£19,689.10) or impris­on­ment for a term not exceed­ing 2 years or both.

The motion was passed unanimously.

Two other impor­tant motions were also passed.

On some of the recent tax exemp­tions, pro­posed by Anthony Cronin and sec­onded by Man­nix Flynn

Aos­dána deplores some of the recent tax exemp­tions granted to the authors of books and calls for the intro­duc­tion of new guide­lines in accor­dance in accor­dance with the spirit of the Act.

Cia­ran O’Driscoll asked if Anthony Cronin would be more spe­cific about who he had in mind. In para­phrase, in his reply Anthony Cronin spoke about the inten­tion behind the exemp­tion, which was granted to a work that is orig­i­nal and cre­ative and is gen­er­ally recog­nised as hav­ing cul­tural or artis­tic merit. He tren­chantly stated that Bertie Ahern’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which was ghost writ­ten, did not come under those guidelines.

To quote The Irish Examiner

Mr Cronin was an adviser for the ini­tial estab­lish­ment of the artists’ exemp­tion scheme, but has stated that many of the works which were now qual­i­fy­ing for exemp­tion were “rub­bish”, and he said Mr Ahern’s recent auto­bi­og­ra­phy, writ­ten by Eng­lish his­to­rian Richard Aldous, was “an exam­ple of how ridicu­lous the whole thing has become”.

The motion was passed unanimously.

Cen­sor­ship by Duna­maise Arts Cen­tre sup­ported by the Arts Coun­cil of Ireland/An Chomairle Éalaíon

Note:Originally pro­posed by Man­nix Flynn, it was pointed out by Glenn Pat­ter­son that (in para­phrase) while he sup­ported the motion he thought that because the motion con­cerned Man­nix Flynn’s com­pany Far Cry Pro­duc­tions that it was not appro­pri­ate that it should be pro­posed by him. This was accepted and Nick Mil­lar agreed to pro­pose the motion.

Pro­posed by Nick Miller, sec­onded by Ulick O’Connor.

That this assem­bly deplores the act of cen­sor­ship imposed by man­age­ment of the Duna­maise Arts Cen­tre Port­laoise on Far Cry Pro­duc­tions’ instal­la­tion of the Visual Arts Show Padded Cell and Other Sto­ries. Fur­ther, that this assem­bly finds that the sup­port by the Arts Coun­cil for such cen­sor­ship inap­pro­pri­ate and unacceptable.

There were strong feel­ings expressed against, notably by Kerry Hardie, and in sup­port, notably by Alice Maher.

The motion was passed over­whelm­ingly, with three votes against.

Dec­la­ra­tion of inter­est I am a mem­ber of Aos­dána and was present at the meet­ing.
Any dis­cus­sion men­tioned here is para­phrased from mem­ory and may not be 100% accu­rate. The motions are copied from the Aos­dána hand­out and the motions and dis­cus­sion were held in Pub­lic Ses­sion.
Philip Casey

Note: The part of this post con­cern­ing the Redress Act will be copied to The God Squad, the web­site of record con­cern­ing such matters.