Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Senator knows, I have been involved with the arts for a long time. My priority will be to do my best for the Arts Council. As regards incomes, I got €230,000 last year for a special philanthropy scheme to see how it would work. We hope the scheme will leverage €1 million, which can be built on next year. If an investment of €230,000 can get a return of €1 million, it is worth investigating other sources of funding for arts organisations. The Arts Council allocated €620,000 last year to encourage philanthropy. This is funded under subhead A7 and other organisations funded under subhead include Business to Arts and IntroArt.

We will do our best to protect funding for the Arts Council and the arts. While I have yet to prepare my final proposals, discussions have been ongoing between my department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the Estimates for next year.