Ms Garry Hynes:

It can be achieved simply - the Government must increase arts funding across the board. It is underfunded. We have spoken a great deal about funding the arts, which tends to make the issue abstract. What the Government would be doing would be funding its own citizens to make art in its own country. So many of them now are not - they are leaving and making it in other countries for other people. It is about increasing funding.

The Arts Council's annual subvention still has not reached 2008 levels. We are chronically underfunded. One only has to look at the facts and the statistics to see that per capita, we have the least in the European Union. We have proved ourselves in recent months to be worthy members of that Union but the funding must be increased. It must stop being something that is done after everything else is done. It has to stop being at the root of arguments whereby people ask how we can increase funding for the arts when people are waiting for houses, hospital beds and so on. It is the life of our citizens who are crucially involved in the arts. It must be at the centre of Government's thinking in terms of the kind of country we want our citizens to live in. It is simple.