Mr. Seán Ó Coinn:

In relation to Creative Ireland, Foras na Gaeilge's schemes are all included as part of Culture 2025 - Éire Ildánach, so we participate in that way.

To clarify, it is not that Foras na Gaeilge is suggesting that we should reduce the budget for the Arts Council. We are delighted to see that the State places such an emphasis on the arts.

What we were really trying to do was illustrate where our budget is at present and that there are very limited options for us in terms of doing anything additional for the arts other than what we do, which is significantly reduced from when we had much more funding pre 2008.