Ms Niamh Ní Chonchubhair:

I will respond in my capacity as chair of Arts and Disability Ireland and as an arts centre director. Technology has certainly significantly reduced barriers. Where I work, audiences who may never have set foot inside the building have joined us. It is key not to leave those audiences behind as we return to rooms. The approach is twofold. We are still seeing a need to return to confident, creative encounters in person, which will be a slow and gradual build, while maintaining and sustaining this digital capacity building we enjoyed during the pandemic. It is important to make note of what accessible digital engagement looks like because sticking auto captions on a prerecorded piece of content is not as accessible as we might think it is and, therefore, we must, as my colleagues have said, continue to engage directly with and listen to people with a variety of access needs, not just those with which we are most familiar and comfortable.

In terms of appetite and audience demand, we have seen a drop-off but we are not willing to let that programming go because we will leave other audiences behind. As a result, there needs to be a two-strand, parallel approach to maintaining and developing this. The development of it still has a way to go to achieve a fully integrated tech experience that honours artistic ambition and quality while perhaps using some of that technology for people who are unable to return to cultural spaces.