Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

To put it very simply, a strategy for culture and a requirement to provide cultural spaces in the development of an area are two related but different things. You can have a fantastic aspirational strategy and commitment to doing things but then not actually have the places and spaces to do them and it is not a requirement in the development of an area that those things be provided for and space be made available for cultural pursuits. That is the difference and I suggest that in many cases, there is literally nowhere to do these things. Even if there is a general commitment in a strategy that they should be done, it is not hard-wired into the development of the area. That is the logic of putting these forward and the Minister of State should seriously consider them because when we think about Ireland of all places, it is a terrible pity that we do not put in the infrastructure to support something that at every level, we should excel in, where we have an extraordinary pool of talent and where it has all those positive impacts on our society when it is done right. In the absence of it, there are often pretty awful consequences.