If you look down the list of 119 arts organisations funded by the national arts body, Creative Scotland, the amount sticks out like a sore thumb - £6.952m.

It is more than double the amount of the next biggest grant - the £3.33m that the Citizen's Theatre will receive in the next three years.

That nearly £7m figure is the amount that the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) will receive in the next three years, with an average support of £2.3m a year.

The figure seems to bulge out of the list of companies receiving income from the arts body. It seems a out of place.

Indeed, the figure is the second highest amount given to any arts company in Scotland, including the government-funded National Companies. Only Scottish Opera's £8.24m this year is higher.

Perhaps it is time to move the festival to another kind of stable funding.

When the list of regularly funded companies was published in October last year, I was not the only observer to wonder whether the time has come for the EIF to be removed from the funding jurisdiction of Creative Scotland and become, like the opera, directly funded by the government.

The line of thinking is roughly this: the large funds it requires make its scale very different from the other companies backed by the arts body, and, given its huge importance to the national cultural landscape, is very unlikely to be unfunded by Creative Scotland (or anyone else).

The EIF should perhaps, given its national and international status, be treated like Scotland's other national performing companies - Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Theatre of Scotland.

They are directly funded by the government - to the tune of £27.6m in 2015/16 - and (although it could be fairly argued this is not an ideal situation) their status and existence is not seriously questioned.

The national companies are out of Creative Scotland's hair - remember when the Scottish Arts Council had to deal with Scottish Opera's neverending funding crisis? - and also the companies themselves say they prefer direct dealings with the government.

They would: it gives them direct access to the people with the purse-strings, and gives them a degree of stability.

This week, Fergus Linehan, the EIF's new director, expressed his concerns for the future funding of the festival, even as he was revealing an innovative and fascinating 2015 programme. He knows the festival's funding cornerstones are the City of Edinburgh Council, subject to its own fiscal pressures, and Creative Scotland. He warned that the festival may have to "drop down a division" in scale and ambition if it feels the squeeze. He knows the pressures on the council, in particular, could see a standstill budget.

The Scottish Government, and one could say particularly this Scottish government, know the importance, prestige and influence of national cultural cornerstones like the EIF.

Perhaps its time to adopt a more direct relationship, and free up Creative Scotland money for others.