OVER the years, Culture and Leisure has made many pleas for more money and, in addition to the latest in the Billet d’Etat, it also believes that in the order of £5m. is needed adequately to house Asterix, the Roman wreck.

Treasury and Resources now says it is not unsympathetic to the more pressing of C&L’s initiatives but, unless it is able to move around savings from other departments – an unlikely prospect – that means the taxpayer digging yet deeper.

Preserving and enhancing Guernsey’s heritage is clearly important, but can that be at any price?

One of the problems for islanders is that States expenditure has simply grown from some point in the past. There has been no root and branch review of where we are today, what is still relevant and where priorities demand more resources.

In that context, if Culture and Leisure is really wedded to what’s best for the area for which it currently has responsibility, it should consider how things might improve if it were to cease to exist.

Such limited key performance indicators as it provides in the States Accounts do not show much, if anything, that absolutely has to be provided by government. Put another way, would the taxpayer get better value if the £7,620,000 C&L spent last year was in the hands of others?

With 264 staff and a payroll cost of £4.6m. it is hardly a lean operation and of the remaining £3m. it administers, the third largest area of expenditure, £665,000, appears to be on simply maintaining its own bureaucracy.

Thought is already being given in Frossard House to further merging of departments and C&L is considered a prime target. That and the commercialisation of Beau Sejour would, the accounts indicate, save the taxpayer £1.4m. a year, excluding the remuneration of the minister and his board. These are not small sums, especially given how they will increase in States hands over the next decade.

So the cash could either be a taxpayer saving or an income stream to plough back into saving the Asterix, improving artefact storage and extending support for the arts and the island’s heritage.

What happens next is a good test of C&L’s priorities: self-preservation or the arts and the island’s heritage.