Ms Orlaith McBride:

I will answer the question on why we are at this point given that the Bonnar Keenlyside review was published in 2014. A different director was in place at that time. Many of the Bonnar Keenlyside were being attended to at the time. The reason we are at the point where the Arts Council has withheld €300,000 is that we have been in negotiations with the Abbey Theatre on a new three year funding deal. We should have made a funding offer to the Abbey back in 2017 for 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2017, the Abbey was not ready to provide us with the type of strategy and vision that would have allowed us to make a three year funding agreement with it. For this reason, we made a one year funding agreement and revisited it when the Abbey provided further information to us. When that information to allow us to make a decision for 2019 and 2020 was provided late last year, issues and areas of concern arose for the Arts Council and I have clearly articulated these. It was at that point that we withheld €300,000 to allow us to enter into discussions with the Abbey Theatre. We have been engaged in discussions since the autumn of last year to address these areas of concern, namely, the remuneration of artists, employment opportunities and the number of Abbey-owned productions versus co-productions. We reached this point in the context of the concerns we had when we started to engage in a process of agreeing a new three year funding envelope with the Abbey Theatre. We met the Abbey Theatre's board and its executive twice before Christmas. We are to be provided with further information prior to a plenary meeting in two weeks. After that, the group will meet again to see what progress has been achieved in the areas we raised.