Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. It is a real privilege to be here today. I was told not to become a member of this committee because there are no votes in it. That in itself is very telling. This is my first time on the arts committee, which raises another question. This committee used to be called arts and sport. Then it became arts and tourism followed by culture, heritage and the Gaeltacht. We refuse, within the arts, to name the cats. We will not name what we are speaking about. It has become globalised and amalgamated into something called culture. There is nothing wrong with culture, heritage or the Gaeltacht. Equally, there is nothing wrong with sport or tourism. Arts is all right if it is connected with tourism or the economy but on its own, we are not too sure. The arts cannot stand as an independent cat.

We lost out politically, in the first instance, that it is not an independent cat, sitting there with all the radii of its own circle and not attached to something here, there and everywhere.

It was interesting at the Dáil100 celebration the other day that what moved the audience and the point at which one could hear a pin drop was "The Coolin" played on the violin and the O'Carolan piece played on the harp. It brought everybody right back to their stomach. It raises the point that the expressive arts, creativity and imagination are important regardless of whether someone takes them up. As a performer, it is important for well-being and not feeling useless.

I wrote a study on bereavement and death in Ireland and whether we do dying well. We do it well ritualistically but we are sometimes not good on grief. Arts people are turned to all the time for the language of grief, to go somewhere when life became meaningless or valueless. That is true for young people, not necessarily as performers, but somewhere to fill up.

Ireland has a politics that says it is all right to give 25 points to mathematics in the leaving certificate but it is not all right to give points to an imaginative passion or creativity like visual arts, dance, theatre, literature, poetry or spoken art, which is completely neglected, or music. We do not think that is a good thing. A good place to start would be to allow young people find a way through communication.

We are also fighting hedges and birds here. We should not fight those issues even on this committee because we will not name the cat. First, we should restore the performing and expressive arts and the creativity and imagination of that radii to its own Department which makes its own decisions and is not messing around in trying to balance.

I could go on about the full meaning of imagination. I could go on about Palestine. I could go on about how the arts is above politics, territory and the Kalashnikov. We could replace the Kalashnikov with the expressive arts. Let us consider the East-Western Divan Orchestra of Mr. Daniel Barenboim, or El Sistema, or Sing Out With Strings. I think of the way the performing arts have elevated people in the worst situations and it is sometimes the only way through when politics has completely let people down.

In Europe, I rarely see the Commissioner for Arts or the Commissioner for Culture or Heritage standing in front of the flags. It is always the bloody economist, or the banker, or the insurance man who is telling us how things should be in front of the waving flags in Europe. We need better speakers and, whether the Government appoints people such as the witnesses, or appoints them internally, we need greater vocalness about it. I ask the witnesses their opinions of what I have said.

One of the problems with national theatre is, as Mr. Hederman said, akin to a cardiograph or a pulse. That pulse or rhythm has been lost. Did we lose that because we have no training school there? What is wrong there and, without being political, what can we do to fix that? Is that Arts Council vocal enough? That is not a political question either. Do the witnesses think we are not being vocal enough?

I saw from my work on dying, death and bereavement that people thought those issues had only to do with health when it had to do with travel, the arts and education. This is across all Departments. Every Minister should have a fool, like in "King Lear", to tell them that a certain route is not the right way to go. There should be an artist sitting in every Department who will say that there is a way forward and a communication level here. My basic point is that we must go back to having an independent creative arts Department that is not a part of something else. We must make the arts - music, drama, theatre, poetry, dance, spoken art - a subject, or rather a discipline, capable of its own independence within education and its own passion within the leaving certificate points system so people can do it for themselves as well as for practicality.

I have made a speech because I am so delighted to have the witnesses present. I always felt the words "elevation" and "joy" around the arts. If I am looking for the truth, I will not go to the press, the TV, the radio or politics, I will watch theatre, or listen to a piece of music, or read a poem, or listen to what Mr. Hederman has to say because I am elevated and brought somewhere by them, both in pain and in joy. There is a truth in what is being said and we are missing that.