Mr. Sunil Sharpe:

It is not all doom and gloom either. Culture night is a great showcase of what can be done over the course of a night using underutilised venues. This is creating a model for a certain portion of the evening that we should be aiming for on a more regular basis. The irony of an event being hosted in the Department of Justice and Equality was not lost on us. We need all types of other spaces that one would not expect to see being used in this way opened up on an ongoing basis. I accept this would require ongoing co-operation between the Government and councils. We are running out of suitable spaces because the commercial model no longer exists. In Dublin in particular we are losing all of our key venues, with many of them now converted into hotels.