Ms Maureen Kennelly:

I echo Professor Rafter's comments about the resilience of the arts sector and how it has behaved in such an incredibly professional way throughout the pandemic. We have seen that it has been extraordinarily generous and graceful in its response, has turned to the public and found new ways to reach the public in the past eight or nine months.

Our immediate priority was to reassure organisations that their funding would be secure for the year and to make that available to freelance artists. We have a policy known as "pay the artist" and we really wanted to make sure that freelance artists were looked after at this time. Their need is the greatest one we have ascertained as the year has gone on.

As we move into 2021, our priority is to ensure the core infrastructure is protected and we protect and sustain the many organisations we support throughout the country, for example, the Baltimore Fiddle Fair, the Ramor Theatre in County Cavan, the Wexford Literature Festival and the Wexford Opera Festival, in order that they come out of this crisis in a healthy state and ready to deliver to their full potential to the public. We have seen how much the public have missed the arts during the crisis. The Joni Mitchell refrain, "That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone", never rang more true. The response has illustrated for the whole country that we are incredibly proud of the arts.

We are grateful for and delighted with the extra funding. It will allow us to protect the core infrastructure through next year and realise a fully vibrant healthy sector as we move into the back end of 2021.