Mr. Eugene Downes:

This is absolutely key. The budget outcome last year was not on track to achieve the ambition to double arts funding over seven years. Over recent months the engagement has been to seek from the Government a roadmap with staging posts through which a commitment to double arts funding could be delivered in a clear and planned way that would give confidence to the sector and which would enable our planning to respond to it. When Project Ireland 2040 was launched, the cultural infrastructure plan, we noted that it represents a doubling of capital spending over a seven-year period. All of the arguments the Government made at that launch as to the importance of multi-annual planning to be able to unlock the value of that public investment on the capital side means that one has to set out a seven or ten-year plan and then the entire sector can respond, as well as public bodies. Our argument has been regarding the current spending. All of the human infrastructure and activity, and equally the multi-annual road map or perspective from the Government and Oireachtas side and from the sector, enables work to be done, the planning to be made and the value to be unlocked in the current spend and investment.