Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his officials for meeting me to discuss the Bill and the functions of the agency, which these amendments address. Culture is mentioned throughout the Bill and that is a welcome addition. The culture and creative sectors, which incorporate arts, heritage and audiovisual media, are essential for who we are and for our international reputation. It is a lightning rod for our well-being. It is rewarding, uncomfortable, entertaining, exciting and provocative and it is a constant challenge to us all at times as well.

What we understand is that these socially very valuable things are also great economic drivers. When we look at the research to prove the points around why we should invest in these things, the research is so desperately out of date. The audiovisual research tells us that the sector had a gross value added, GVA, of €1.1 billion in this State and created 10,000 indirect jobs and 16,000 direct, indirect and induced full-time equivalent jobs. However, this research is from 2015.

When we want to prove the economic value of the arts sector, we go back to 2010. The arts sector, excluding film and video, had a total expenditure of €1.4 billion and created 10,000 direct jobs and 16,000 indirect jobs. If we want to do the same and look at the heritage sector to prove the value and worth of it economically, we go back to 2009. The figures prove that these sectors have an economic value but the fact that the figures come from different years and are so desperately out of date is part of the challenge we have in understanding the value of our culture. We do not even take it seriously enough to track it on a regular basis.

Professor Daniel Carey and Dr. Steven Hadley from NUI Galway have written an excellent paper on Ireland's creative and cultural industries in which they draw a comparison between Ireland and Britain. They highlight the fact that Britain, in association with its universities, has multiple creative industries centres which are policy- and evidence-based. They argue that the Irish Research Council would have been well placed to support such an initiative here. Considering that the Irish Research Council will be incorporated into this new agency, it is important the functions of the agency evolve or that we at least lay down a marker here that we should have a cultural and creative evidence and policy centre of our own in Ireland. Even if we have a State agency like the Arts Council or Screen Ireland, for film, video and animation, their research and work will have an element of politics about it.It is important that we have a very independent evidence and policy centre for the arts, creativity and cultural industries and that it is associated with a university. I would welcome the Minister of State's thoughts on this and on the lack of research and policy that we have in the creative and cultural industries.