Ms Liz Meaney:

To answer the Senator's question, the budget for dance is €3.3 million. That is the Arts Council's annual allocation for 2019. There are many other budgets through which dance is supported, such as arts centre. Virtually every arts centre in the country has dance programmes. We recently saw extraordinary work by Irish choreographers working in collaboration with other artforms. An example would be Emma Martin, who recently worked as a choreographer with the Irish National Opera. All of the direct expenditure on dance is not reflected in that €3.3 million. I do not have the full breakdown of the allocation across the arts teams to hand. I can give some figures off the top of my head. The budget for arts centres last year was €5.6 million. The budget for festivals and events, of which a number are specifically dance festivals, was approximately €2.8 million. The budget for music is approximately €4.6 million. There is a variety of budgets.

I concur that the quality and strength of dance practice in Ireland at present is very strong, especially for a country of this size. Dance companies such as Teac Damsa, CoisCéim and the resource organisations here today do work with an impact on our audiences. We estimate that there were as many as 20,000 engagements between the public and dance across the country in 2019. There is real strength and I think that will absolutely benefit from further investment. I would equally make the case that other art forms would benefit from additional investment. It is our role as the Government's agency to shepherd and support to ensure that we are investing as far forward as we can. Ms Webster spoke about the benefit of advance planning. We would like to do that more to give companies their money two to three years in advance so that they can create these international collaborations and partnerships that will lead to our dancers or artists taking their work around the world and bringing it back here.