PARLIAMENT bosses are planning to spend around £75,000 of public money on a neon image created by one of Scotland's greatest artists. The Corporate Body, which runs Holyrood, has come up with proposals to buy AEIO Blue by the late Ian Hamilton Finlay. However, critics of the purchase have said it is a "disgrace" that the parliament wants to spend taxpayers' money collecting art.

Several paintings and sculptures are sited at Holyrood, either due to an artist's donation or an acquisition by the parliament. Holyrood is now planning to enhance its collection by purchasing a piece by Finlay, the controversial artist and poet.

Earlier this month, the Corporate Body moved ahead with a proposal to buy AEIO Blue, a neon image, for around £75,000. It is understood it is being earmarked for the parliament's garden lobby, next to the canteen used by MSPs and their staff.

Parliament chiefs discussed the plan earlier this month and decided the final decision should be made by Holyrood's art advisory group, which is to be re-established next month.

The former director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Richard Calvocoressi, a former member of the advisory group, held talks with Finlay about acquiring one of his works before the artist died last year.

One of Finlay's exhibits, Coble - an abstract painted boat - already hangs in the parliament.Calvocoressi has said of Finlay: "I think Ian Hamilton Finlay was probably, in my time, the greatest Scottish artist. What's so extraordinary about his art is that it has an immediate visual impact, even though it also requires some kind of linguistic impact. You have to read it in both senses."

Finlay was a notoriously prickly artist who had several feuds with galleries, the Scottish Arts Council and local government bureaucrats.

He had run-ins with council officials over the rates he should pay on his Little Sparta sculpture garden in the Pentland hills, a five-acre treasure that is littered with references to ancient Greece and Rome.

His work also attracted controversy, such as when he was accused of flirting with Nazi imagery at an exhibition in Paris staged to mark the bicentenary of the French revolution.

He also added the following line to a print of a prison by Piranesi: "When the world took to tolerance it took to crime."

Richard Ingleby, who runs the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, said: "AEIO Blue is a very good neon piece. That particular work has been realised in more than one medium. An important neon like that would go for £70,000 to £80,000."

Asked if Holyrood was going to buy the neon work, a parliament spokesman said: "There are no current planned purchases. It is expected that future acquisitions will be a matter for the next art advisory group once it is established. The SPCB Scottish parliament Corporate Body is likely to consider membership of the group in October."

The Taxpayers' Alliance said: "It is a disgrace that our political elite are so out of touch that they think this is a good use of anyone's money. Why are we paying so much for these politicians to satisfy their expensive arty tastes?"