Mr. Theo Dorgan:

Why is that? Successive Governments and the instruments of Governments and the State have come to define the State as their property and there has been a sliding away from the idea that the Members of Dáil and Seanad Éireann and those who inhabit the upper reaches of the public service are at the service of the people. This is not an abstract concept when it comes to the arts. When people decide not to teach the arts or to promote the arts in school they are going against the express interests and wishes of the people. The State does not have that right. Conversely, it has a duty to ask the people what they want and to arrange to give it to them.

The idea that somebody somewhere in a committee knows what is best for us is, quite frankly, beyond offensive. We know what we want and what the Irish people want when they are finished paying their tithes to mammon and selling their time and a considerable portion of lives in order to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. They want music, theatre, sport and the things that give passion and excitement and a release to their imaginations. It is not for the State to deliberate and decide whether it will grant us this. The State has a responsibility to answer to that imperative if it is to continue to secure the willing adhesion of the people. Let us not fetishise the Democratic Programme but listen to what it says and do something concrete about implementing it.