Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am kidding, but he did say it. I used to meet him quite a lot at the theatre before he became Taoiseach. He is very genuinely interested in the arts. The arts are our heartbeat and without them we are lesser human beings, educationally, performance-wise and observationally. There must be a huge surge against these forces to actually make the arts central. Funding is extraordinarily important to ensuring this does not happen to theatre professionals, so that they have ways and routes-----