Mr. Colm Croffy:

No, it would not. During the Covid-19 pandemic, two schemes were announced by the Department in respect of temporary public realm infrastructure to address those gaps in terms of staging and stage coverings. I am also aware that under the previous round of LEADER funding, several forward-thinking companies in this context got clusters of villages and community development hubs to group purchase marquees, awnings, stages, public address, PA, systems and lights so they could share those facilities on a round-robin basis, provided some municipal district or central storage point and caretaker access was provided. This is the future. Not every community arts group is going to own their own photocopier here in 15 years. We will have to learn that sharing is not just for "Sesame Street".

Regarding the pressure on venue usage in places where they are sparse, and I would have thought Clonakilty would have had several venues, I am thinking of Monksland, a large suburb of Athlone, which has one school, 8,000 people and not even a synagogue. I can offer the example of the Netherlands in this regard. Over the past four years, the Dutch authorities received a gift of 1,200 churches from the former Dutch Reformed Church, and that may very well happen here in time as well, where several synagogues may be returned to the State and repurposed for a variety of things.