Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister had a carryover of €6.158 million into this year from last year in capital expenditure. Might she explain how that arose? At this stage, what is her estimate: will she spend all the capital under the arts, culture and film subhead this year? Having a carryover is something to be avoided at all times because, as the Minister knows, when you have a carryover and you go to the Department of Finance looking for more money, they will say, "Well, you did not spend what we gave you last year." It will use that stick to beat you.

The Department got a considerable amount of money this year for the 1916 commemoration across a number of subheads and programmes. That is why I hoped we might have a quick debate at the very beginning about the overall allocation to the Department. First, I take it that the Department will not expend as much next year on the decade of commemoration. Second, I am sure that every one of the organisations that benefit, whether it is the likes of the National Museum and galleries, the archives, the Arts Council or whatever, is starved for finance. Does the Minister expect to hold the same amount of gross money for the Department's Vote next year as this Revised Estimate, now she has it? Can we encourage the Minister to make a very strong case to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, that if he can afford it this year he can afford it next year - that the arts, heritage, the Gaeltacht and the islands have been starved of cash for the last five years and that it would be a welcome boost if the Department kept its headline budget for next year at least, because there are many things that need to be done?

We have a lot of problems in our country, but probably the most intractable problem we face is areas of high urban deprivation. They seem to be intergenerational. I often wonder why, with all the modern communications and interconnectivity of the world, these areas seem to be stuck in a rut of poverty. When one compares those areas now to areas in post-Famine Ireland that were really poor, they are not self-generating and creating wealth like post-Famine Ireland. Then one has to ask why these areas are not coming forward because they are a lot richer than post-Famine Ireland was. Why are they not progressing like post-Famine people did, either at home or abroad? Was there a much higher cultural and educational value in the great poverty of post-Famine Ireland? Did people have that value of culture and education that maybe is not currently there in the highly deprived areas? Therefore, would we get a great benefit in economic and social terms if we put more money into arts, culture, heritage, language and all the other things of the mind in these highly deprived areas? When one looks at the output in, for example, the poorest of Gaeltacht areas in terms of the literature of the 19th century and compares it to some of our vast urban areas with massive populations, one has to ask whether we have starved these people and kept them separate from these things on the basis that culture, heritage and art are an added extra for the middle classes, but not really for everybody? Has any analysis been done by the Minister's Department of the penetration of this €188 million last year into these areas of high deprivation? For example, how many people from the poorer, more socially disadvantaged RAPID areas go to the Abbey Theatre, the National Museum or the National Gallery, or are involved in drama and all the things of the mind? As I said, people underestimate the power of the mind for social and economic good and they think that, in the modern world, this is not for everybody, that it does not really have much importance and that it is an add-on, rather than a huge social driver.