ONE might have been forgiven for thinking that those involved in the arts had a well-developed sense of irony and and an advanced appreciation of the absurd in life. Our revelations today about Creative Scotland spending £150,000 on external “assessors” to do its day-to-day work, while it got on with decisions to cut funding for cultural organisations, suggests that this is not always the case.

To say the least of it, this is not a good look. That the cuts involved disabled and children’s groups made the original decisions look bad enough already. That £150,000, while small beer in the vast vat of public spending, could keep an arts organisation going for a good while gives rise to the perception that this is a clear case of putting bureaucracy before art.

Perhaps that is simplistic or populist. Perhaps it is even Philistine: "Yet more money for bureaucrats!" Well, the “bureaucrats” will get the chance to explain themselves when they come before Holyrood's culture committee today

As matters stood, before this latest revelation, Creative Scotland was already facing strong questioning about the mess it made of its three-year packages for regularly funded organisations (RFOs). After many months of mulling over these decisions, within a week it was then forced by the resultant row to reconsider some of them.

To buy itself the mental space in which to make these original decisions, it hired a raft of external assessors to consider other funds, beyond the RFOs, which also fall within the organisation’s remit. In other words, it got external experts in to carry out its job, a luxury that many people would like to afford.

Let us stress that no one is criticising the experts they brought in. They are among the best in their fields, and none of them got rich from the work. The real question is: why did Creative Scotland think it was necessary to do this? Has it found itself part of a wider culture, so to say, of rising bureaucracy? In England only yesterday, serious questions were raised about the massive costs of external consultants to the NHS, particularly since the service had become less efficient.

So did Creative Scotland bring in external experts to make it more efficient? Surely we must assume so. But even if we were to give them the benefit of the doubt, we would have to doubt the benefit of working like this. Are we to read into it that Creative Scotland is under-staffed, that it cannot cope with this undoubtedly onerous decision-making process every three years?

If that is the case, then it must say so. Who funds the funders? The Scottish Government. And, since Creative Scotland’s chiefs will be facing questions from Holyrood’s culture committee today, perhaps they’ll take the opportunity to make their case.

But that will not be a good look either: asking for money for bureaucrats in order to stop having to spend money on bureaucrats. Thus the ironies and absurdities take greater hold. Perhaps it’s just the way of the modern world, since we must accept that the dispensing of public funds will require publicly funded officials.

But the benefits of Creative Scotland, at least in the way it goes about its business, are becoming doubtful to many. Is it fit for purpose? Does it work properly? Can it be improved?

Creative Scotland is full of intelligent people. They will know that all public funding comes under scrutiny, and none more so than the hiring of external “consultants” at a time when cuts are being made. They will accept that questions have to be asked. And they will find it neither ironic nor absurd that arts groups, and indeed taxpayers, will want some answers today.