Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae's comments on festivals. I am involved in a festival committee myself, as most of us here are. I call Ballydehob the festival capital of Ireland. There seems to be a festival there most weekends. They are struggling, like many other towns through west Cork, because the festivals cannot keep going back to struggling businesses to ask for funding. Many are going out of business in very rural parts of Ireland, or else they are paying high rates and cannot afford it. The voluntary groups who organise festivals end up paying large sums on accounts and for insurance. If a festival wants to have any chance of getting funding, it has to tick all those boxes, and I know some groups are paying €2,500 or €3,000 in insurance alone, before any claims, to keep the boat on the shore.

I will raise something which Deputy Healy-Rae mentioned and the Minister tried to cover in her answer. It is a little parochial but the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is co-funding with Cork County Council a hugely successful visual arts degree which the Dublin Institute of Technology delivers on Sherkin Island in west Cork. Over the years, it has been a major boost, not only to Sherkin Island but also Baltimore, Union Hall, Glandore, Leap, Skibbereen and all the surrounding area where students and families can fill local establishments off-season. The Department has kept its commitment, and while I am not being critical of the Minister of State, Deputy McHugh, and it is super to deliver it on an island where there is little activity off-season, for some reason the local authority is dithering over its €20,000 commitment. The Department has funding of €167.3 million for arts and culture and €48.6 million for the islands, which we will discuss more with the Minister of State, Deputy McHugh. Sherkin Island cannot afford to lose this course. The Department has been the main pillar in this, and I am asking now that it be the main building because if the local authority continues dithering the way it is, the course will be dead in the ground. The local authority was supposed to come before the joint committee some weeks ago, but unfortunately the meeting could not go ahead because of the snow. I hope it will be rescheduled in the near future, but I am asking the Minister and the Minister of State to look to their Department to see if it can be the main funder. I understand that they will be unable to give me an answer now, but it cannot go on like this. They are looking for a commitment that was given by the local authority, which unfortunately was given verbally, although there are witnesses who can prove it. The council is now reneging on this commitment, the future of the funding is looking dodgy, and it looks as though that island will lose that course. I would appreciate if the Department could have a serious look at it to see how they might work together to resolve this, even if it means that the local authority is back on the field again. It would be hugely important.