Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is most refreshing to be around colleagues and what John McGahern called freshwater people. People who work in the arts are always freshwater people - good trout. I thank all the witnesses for being here because we got from them a really tremendous sense of the arts as it relates to youth, education, lifelong learning and the elderly.

I will ask a few very specific questions and then the witnesses can come back in and answer me as they see fit. The first question is could the committee visit Sherkin Island? What is the standard of the work? Will Ms Moran and Ms O'Neill Collins talk to me a little about that? Why do I not know more about it? They can be thinking about these questions as we go. Ms O'Neill Collins's contribution about any college coming to a rural area was a brilliant idea, and I would link it into something Ms Solon talked about, namely, that combination of people coming in and bringing their own knowledge and others learning from them as well as gifting their own knowledge. The course is validated through DIT. If we want to recognise the course more, do we give it more money? Is that what the witnesses want? Will they nail that for me and why I do not know more about it?

I know the Bealtaine Festival very well. I admire it and think it is extraordinary. Dr. Byrne makes the same point Ms Solon makes, that access to creativity is access to great health and that great health is great creativity.

The witness makes that point from that extraordinary survey. I was at a big organisational event this morning about positive ageing and life ageing in towns and villages. Creativity was only tagged onto things. It was not central to what people were discussing. Will the witness expand on the point that political parties, and perhaps all Departments, should have an arts section? If the organisation was looking for one thing for this committee to make real what would it be?

Can the representative from Arts and Disability Ireland say if Ignite being reignited?

Can the representative of the NCAD tell us a little about the Mercer Hospital ageing unit and the Creative Life Centre? Why has the college not argued for 25 extra points in the Central Applications Office, CAO, system to open up the arts for study by students? We readily do it for mathematics. What other things would the representative like to see NCAD doing, if it had a wish list?

On McAuley Place, could the committee visit it? Can the witness tell the committee a little more about its music series, its art, its environmental art, the Alzheimer's choir and the food hall? I know about them but the committee might like to hear about them.

My questions are really about what we can do. Much of this can be policy and talk, which is very good and ethereal, but what can we do? We are discussing something really interesting. If we are going to age and age well, creativity must be the start of it. When people talk about technology they always talk about creativity. When they talk about economics they also talk about creativity. However, we do not look at it artistically or we tag it onto something else or we have our eye on the main chance that it is to do with tourism and it makes money. However, it is brilliant in itself. If we started from that premise we might go further.

The witnesses might have other things they want to say that they might not have said earlier or that my questions might have sparked in them. These are not examination questions but for expansion.