Mr. Joe Hamill:

The issue around national lottery funding is strange in a way. We do not get funding directly in the sense of being given national lottery funding to distribute. There are a number of parts of the Vote that are part-funded by the national lottery. Areas like the Irish language are part-funded by the national lottery. We get our allocations through the Estimates in the normal way and at a certain time of the year, national lottery funding is distributed through the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It is offset against our Vote. We do not distribute national lottery funding directly in that sense. The areas that are part-funded are the Arts Council, which makes its own decisions about how it disperses its moneys under its own legislation, the Heritage Council and our Irish language schemes, which is the only area where the Department spends money directly that is then partly offset against national lottery funding. Some of the work we do around promoting the Irish language, particularly outside the Gaeltacht, would be funded in that way.