Mr. Paul Fahy:

I welcome Deputy Ó Cuív's comments on arts being central to human existence. We could not agree with him more. Arts and culture are our greatest calling card internationally. It has been proven time and again any time a representation leaves our shores. I am sure Mr. Eugene Downes will be able to echo that with his former position as director of Culture Ireland.

A practical thing that would help us with planning a year or two or three ahead would be multi-annual funding. We spoke a little about that before the Deputy joined the meeting. We are crying out for a contemporary visual arts space in Galway. We have made many calls for that over many years. We reimagined spaces this year, in an old newspaper printing house, warehouses and dockside sheds. That is no place for the visual arts. We need a proper centre for visual arts. With regard to our commitment to County Galway, we are a Galway city-based organisation. We do programmes in the county. Last year, we successfully toured our national theatre, the Abbey Theatre, to both the Aran Islands and County Galway as well as Galway city.

On Senator Warfield's question about gender equality policy, in 2017 we had more women involved in the festival than man. This year, we have a few more men involved than women, but over the course of three or four years, which is how we average it out, it is pretty much 50:50.