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

As far as I am concerned, the decision by Mary Robinson to take or not to take the tax under the law was for her to make. It is not of any relevance to the Department other than confirming that it falls under the Acts. It is a mechanical process. She was right to say that she would not try to claim it. I believe that the proposal made in the 1960s should be implemented, that is, that all presidential material should be donated to the State at the end of a presidency. It would be a good idea to follow through on that and make sure there is a presidential room or rooms in the National Museum of Ireland, as proposed by a former President, to which all the material should be left. Most of our former Presidents brought different gifts to the job and had interesting archives. As the gifts they get as President and the papers they collect are relevant to the job, the presidency papers should automatically return to the State in due course.

First, on the particular issue, I take it this project was site specific in that this was the location where Mary Robinson grew up. It is similar to building the interpretative centre for Pearse's cottage near Pearse's cottage because that is where it was located. There are constraints with regard to the sites at the location where one would choose to build the interpretative centre because that is where it happened. We are dealing with Moore Street currently, which is site specific also. The Minister might confirm if I am correct in that.

Second, I presume there is a procedure in the Department with applications under this particular subhead. The Civil Service, from executive officer or higher executive officer level upwards, gets an application from, say, Mayo County Council, the opera house in Wexford and so on. They prepare a file which goes through the various stages and is then sent to the Secretary General, certainly in the case of a big grant such as this one, who is also the Accounting Officer and is responsible for the process of spending, unlike the Minister who is responsible for policy. That then goes to the Minister to be signed off.

When this file came to the Minister, there was a recommendation either to sign off or to refuse the application for a grant. The Minister might confirm if there was a recommendation. We can get all this information through a freedom of information, FOI, request. The information the Chairman sought is not available. All any of us had to do was put in a FOI request. I did not bother to do so. However, the Minister can confirm today that a file came to her in the normal way that was prepared by the public service through the various layers. In most cases, Ministers would get a recommendation either to sign or not sign. The Minister could sign to grant even if it was recommended to her not to do so, although it is not very common. The Minister might confirm for us if a proposal came to her recommending that this grant be given, and she might also confirm the size of the grant.

The arthouse cinema in Galway has been mentioned. There can be cost overruns as issues can arise in any project, but I always took the view, and I took it with the Jeanie Johnston, that when we have gone as far as spending €12 million, we might as well spend €13 million and finish the project than leave nine tenths of the build lying idle. I hope the money will be put together to open the arthouse cinema to the public because currently it is a useless eyesore on a premium site.

We get very excited about some of these cases. I see the Jeanie Johnstonmoored on the quays, on which a fantastic job was done. Five years from now, will anybody be wondering whether the cost of that project reached €500,000, not because money was wasted but because it went over budget for one reason or another? That can happen on building projects. Many community projects go over target. I always took a sanguine view in that if something unforeseen arose, we should just deal with it. As long as there is not misappropriation of funds, so be it because the greater good would say that an open theatre is better than a four fifths finished theatre. The Minister might let us know if we are near endgame in terms of getting the arthouse cinema finished and opened to the public. Whatever innocent mistakes were made by the promoters, I am happy they did what they did for the best reasons. If they did not, there are many procedures that can be followed, including the Comptroller and Auditor General. If that is the problem and somebody believes there was misappropriation of funds, this issue should be dealt with by the Committee of Public Accounts, not this committee.

We have reached the stage where we have become great bean counters but sometimes we lose sight of the big picture. We need prestige cultural projects. They are not commercially viable. Most of these projects are loss leaders in that they will never pay for themselves, but they are incredibly important to the economy of a region. Taxpayers putting money into iconic features pays off in general tax revenue, on the Government's balance sheet and in terms of the cultural well-being of the people. I am very proud that Galway has been designated the European capital of culture for 2020. The Minister's colleague sitting beside her will be able to tell her how many millions-----