Mr. John Crumlish:

As part of this, what we are also doing is building. The festival in 2017 was our biggest ever. Now 2018 is our biggest festival ever and 2019 will be our biggest festival ever.

We are scaling up into 2020, when Galway will hold the capital of culture designation. This will be hugely important for the west of Ireland and the wider cultural community in Ireland. It is a real opportunity, one we will not have again for 26 years, and this has very much influenced our thinking in the intervening time. It is probably the most prestigious cultural designation in the world. It rarely has been to a region this small so we have to make the most of it. We will also have to partner with a lot of people in the west and outside of it to deliver the best possible experience to the maximum number of people and to do service to the brand west of Ireland and brand Ireland with a view to looking outwards to Europe in that regard.

Galway International Arts Festival creates world class arts experiences for thousands of people. It has always been the mission of the festival to create the best possible experience for as many people as possible. This has been our mission for 41 years. Approximately 25% of our programmes are free of charge and we also subsidise many of the festival tickets. We see ourselves as a major platform for Irish artists and a platform on which international promoters can view the Irish work being showcased from around Ireland. Many promoters from the UK and the US come to the festival to see what we have on, with a view to taking it up. A key part of the festival is our productions with Irish artists nationally and internationally over as long a period as possible. There are things we created three years ago still touring, which is very exciting in terms of the work provided and from a brand Galway perspective. It is also very good from a brand Irish cultural perspective. We see ourselves as a major flagship for brand Galway. The national and international media quotes mentioned would indicate that this is more and more the case. The touring very much supports that view. If one is in New York one is more likely to get TheNew York Timesthan would be the case if one is in Galway. Last year, we had three pieces of work in New York in the space of one year, which were mentioned five times in TheNew York Times. As a result of this new work on "Grief is a Thing with Feathers", which premiered in Galway April this year, got more column inches in The New York Timesthan it did in The Irish Times. It is about getting out there and building a brand for Irish culture.

We made three recommendations, the first of which is around our fund ambition. We would be of the controversial view that currently the arts are being funded for their existence and the notion of ambition is somebody else's job in the sense that the State must turn and start funding ambitious projects if we are to compete on the world stage. It is very acceptable that throughout the recession it was difficult for the State to continue to support the arts, and it did so very well in terms of keeping that broad landscape going, but we are over that and, if we are going to be world class in terms of our culture, the State must now move to the next stage and fund ambitious projects. We also believe that festivals should be supported to produce new work. This is an expensive business and a risky business. Not every production will be a success. These are great platforms to produce new work because they have good audiences and they create a lot of access. People come to see the work. There is an existing network of festivals that allow us to get this work out there.

We also believe it should be key that festivals showcase as much Irish work as possible. The State funds the development of a lot of Irish work and we believe that this work once funded and invested in should get out to as many people as possible for as long as people. We think festivals can play a vital role in providing a showcase for helping that work get out there.