Dr. Tara Byrne:

I thank the Chairman and the committee. We are honoured to be able to speak today about the Bealtaine Festival. We will speak about the demand, role and need for the festival in Ireland and beyond, the personal value that accrues from the festival to the individuals who participate in it, the State value and benefits that come from it in a secondary way and in the context of the policies around us, and we will make some recommendations at the end.

I thought I would present with some images and I was going to show a range of images from this year's festival. At the centre of the festival are individuals, who are at the centre of all arts activity. This is obvious in the images of people who dominate the festival and in the images of groups of people connecting with each other. It is about the personhood of the individual, which is something that gerontologists talk about all of the time. It is hugely important to all of us no matter what age we are but particularly as we get older. It is about the social connections that come from attending our festival. These were the two key points I was going to make through using images.