Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a point about the work which the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, is doing in the area of sports capital. All of us in this room have seen the extraordinary leveraging of community life, endeavour and vitality that arises from the sports capital fund. It unlocks much more in fundraising, hard work and commitment locally. The sports capital model unlocked that sporting endeavour, for example, far more women are involved in sport now. Has an arts capital grant ever been looked at that would similarly unlock that in artistic endeavour? We have the model. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. In the sports capital grant, the robustness of the assessment, the mechanisms by which people make their applications and the grant awarding system are already there. Many communities have either no or poor arts facilities. If they received even an initial injection - a fraction of what we invest in sport - we could do something really special.