Ms Katherine Licken:

With our new investment programme under the national development programme there will be money for facilities right across the country for capital investment. We are very focused on regional development. The Minister will launch the full programme in the next couple of weeks. The Model in Sligo got €3.5 million.

Nobody claims what happened here is an ideal outcome but on the other hand, we have still delivered what we set out to deliver, albeit at a higher cost and a private sector company is managing it. The outcome in terms of what is provided in the cinema is the same as what it would have been if it were managed by Solas. It set out to have an art house offering in Galway.

Ireland has been behind in art house cinema provision in comparison to our EU counterparts. Dublin was the only place that had art house cinema but we have achieved that. Would we have liked it to have been achieved by a not-for-profit organisation? Yes, we would. Would we have liked it to have been achieved within the valuation that was set out on the first day? Yes, we would. Did we have critical points in the project where we had to decide whether to continue with this or abandon it? Yes, we did, and we decided to continue with it. Did we have to consider what is the best way for this project to happen? We came to a conclusion that the only way this project was going to be delivered was with Element Pictures taking over. They were the difficult decisions that, unfortunately, we had to make.