Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. I was watching their contributions on the monitor in my office. I was struck by two perspectives. I recall somebody saying, in the middle of the worst stages of the pandemic, that in rushing back to normal after the pandemic, we must decide what aspects of normal are worth returning to. We learned an awful lot about how we structure the workplace to operate remotely during the pandemic. We also learned an awful lot about how we facilitate greater enjoyment of art and culture through the use of technology from the perspective of both the audience and the creator. A lot of work was done by the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, to empower many of our cultural spaces to broadcast online, giving them facilities they did not have before. How much of a role is technology going to play in disseminating art and culture more effectively in the future? What role does it have to play in terms of the creator being able to reach a far wider audience? I hope our guests will agree that is a significant opportunity. How can artists and performance spaces be empowered to become more adept and effective at using that technology? How can they be funded?