Mr. Conor Falvey:

On the funding for local authorities for this year, the budget for this is still in draft form and has not been signed off, but the proposal is for €10,000 per local authority. It is also proposed, where there are significant centenaries in individual local authority areas, that the Department would support local authorities to an additional level, as we would have done this year with Soloheadbeg and Knocklong, for example. The level of funding was in the order of €30,000 per local authority in 2016. The events of 2016 were more concentrated in the year in question and the commemorations for 2020 and beyond would be over a longer period. We can look at the levels of resourcing in the long term beyond 2020 in the context of normal budget and Estimate processes but, broadly speaking, that is the proposed level of funding in draft form.

The expert advisory group on centenary commemorations might come back to this but we have been in consultation with other Departments on their plans and proposals. The Department of Justice and Equality has plans to commemorate the founding of the Courts Service, the introduction of the Courts of Justice Act 1924 and the pre-1922 judicial system. As the Deputy knows, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has published a document commemorating the foundation of the diplomatic service. The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government has plans for the Custom House. A range of proposals is emerging across Departments and cultural institutions for the appropriate commemoration of the events. The State will be supporting those commemorations and applying resources for those purposes. Some of that will fall into this budget and some of it may fall elsewhere, depending on the nature of the event and where it is being held. There is a range of proposals across different Government Departments that go beyond the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. We have been consulting on that and an interdepartmental committee has been established and is meeting regularly to provide updates and to gather all the information on the plans and proposals across Government.