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Culture minister Mike Russell may have laid to rest speculation about the cost of Creative Scotland but he's left many questions hanging in the air.

In his statement to parliament this morning, he confirmed the new body, which will merge Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council, will cost £3.3m to set up - with at least a third of that figure going towards redundancies at the existing organisations.

Other costs include rebranding the new body - £75,000 - and retraining new and existing staff although since both organisations' headquarters are being retained, there are no overheads in that area.

The money won't come from the existing organisations' budgets (although they've already footed the bill for the initial £700,000).

Instead, it will come directly from the Scottish government.

And while that will no doubt come as a relief to the artistic community, it's still a lot of money, particularly in the midst of a world wide recession.

Mr Russell - who admits he wasn't always won over by the idea - says he believes the resulting organisation will live up to expectations.

"It's a long term investment," he said, "it'll be another 12 to 18 months before we'll see what has been achieved."

Opposition MSPs and artists who signed the 400 name petition earlier this year, calling a halt to the transition, are less convinced.

"It's the old adage - don't fix what ain't broke," said artist Janie Nicoll, "you have to question why they feel the need to spend so much money on two organisations which are doing a reasonably good job of what they do. £3m is a lot of money, wherever it's coming from."

There are, of course, plenty of people who believe both organisations need a radical shakeup - but once again it raises more questions than it answers.

Will the new organisation offer loans instead of grants? Will it be based on the exisiting committee system? Will the costs rise in the year ahead? and will the body even be given the go-ahead, having failed to be voted through in a previous piece of legislation?

That question, at least, may be answered in the next month or two when the Public Services Reform bill is considered in parliament.