Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----but it does not make me weaker. The arts has sometimes played a second, if not a third or a fourth, role in education and the Arts Council has a huge part to play in perhaps developing the role of the arts in education. What are Ms Pratschke's thoughts on that?

I am delighted to hear Ms Orlaith McBride is working alongside the Department of Education and Skills on a new charter because the last one was appalling. It was aspirational and there was no sense of practicality about it. We all know the arts is about practical implementation. It is about the living of and not just the theory and philosophy of the arts. There was a lot of philosophy and no practicality in the last charter.

The arts in education is key to all of the things Ms Pratschke spoke about in terms of the community, reaching out and young people coming to the theatre and understanding it as a part of their natural lives. Perhaps Ms Pratschke's legacy will be a complete development of all of the arts, including the visual arts, drama, dance, literature and poetry, as independently major areas of education because we consistently capitulate to maths, the sciences and business and we do not give the arts the platforms needed and the job it can do in one thousand different ways. Has Ms Pratschke thoughts on that as part of her policy or advocacy for the future?