Mr. Feargal Ó Coigligh:

I thank the Senator for his questions. A very important point to make, and to pick up on what Ms McBride said, is that while the report is directed at the Arts Council, much of it is applicable to the Department. It is just a level up. Many of the issues apply completely to the Department in terms of the arts. There is greater room for more research.

The national campaign for the arts was acknowledged in the report as making a positive contribution, but there is greater room to work more closely with the Arts Council on much of the work it is doing. For example, with regard to the geographical and spatial spread of resources, we have been criticised in the past for the fact that our capital funding schemes have not been sufficiently policy or strategically-led. Rather than recreate the work Ms McBride has done, we need to work more closely with the Arts Council and other partners to bolster that aspect of our business.

As a caveat, I met my counterparts from the UK jurisdictions last Friday and they are in a different economic place. A different economic approach is taken in the United Kingdom. During the recession they kept the economy primed, but, now that the economy is recovering, they have decided to cut and burn. They are looking at the levels of cuts we had to take in the past few years. My colleagues in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said they had put together good arguments showing that personal well being arose from investment in the arts and culture, but they did not know whether they would get any purchase when it came to finding the money. It is often stated we have the lowest level of spending on the arts of any jurisdiction in the European Union, but we cannot say that because we do not have the research. The information does not come only from the Department or the Arts Council and we will not be in a position to argue that case until we carry out the research required. There is much for the Department to learn from this report, too.