Ms Sarah Bannan:

I thank the Chairman for those questions and it was interesting to hear the other presentations as well. I have written down the questions to make sure I do not miss anything. We can break down the funding and I can follow up with the Chairman on that afterwards. The reason we presented it this way is that it would be done crudely. Some of these organisations, like Feasta, Futa Fata or Comhar, are exclusively for the Irish language or for Imram, the Irish-language literature festival. Then there are organisations we fund, like Poetry Ireland, that are national and all-island organisations that are working through English and Irish. We have been working in recent years to try to encourage those organisations to make Irish-language literature more central to what they are doing and to raise the visibility of Irish within them. The Chairman is right that some of these organisations are not involved in Irish-language literature at all, but the purpose of the draft policy, which should be adopted later this year by the Arts Council, and of the strategy are about bringing up the visibility of Irish and trying to encourage all those players within literature in Ireland to present, promote and commission Irish language literature as a core part of their work. We can give that information on funding but it would be a crude exercise and it would take out some of the nuance. The purpose of this is to try to give the full picture.

There are some bullet points below that financial appendix that talk about our supports to individual writers. It is true we receive an awful lot more applications from individual writers working through English that from those working through the Irish language, and that is something we want to address. We might receive around 20 applications per round from Irish language writers when we might receive 200 in the English language. Part of the policy and strategy is about articulating the Arts Council's role in making it clear to those writers who are working on high-quality literary work that the Arts Council is there to support them.

We work with Foras na Gaeilge and we make sure our funding is not duplicated as a matter of course. One of the actions within the draft strategy is to develop a memorandum of understanding between ourselves and Foras na Gaeilge that distinguishes what our role is. Foras na Gaeilge's interest in the Irish language is broader than that of the Arts Council; we are just looking at Irish language literature. However, not all Irish language writing falls within that category. The Chairman is right that this is part of it but we work with Foras na Gaeilge frequently. An example of a project we are working on with it now is Áine Ni Ghlinn's wonderful An Bosca Leabharlainne, which sees Irish-language books going to schools throughout the country. That is all about encouraging reading for pleasure through the Irish language.

The Chairman is right about the next generation of readers and writers and about the current generation. We are looking at two things within that. Within the literature team we are doing some research this year on reading and on what drives people to read for pleasure. We are looking at what people read in English and at what drives them to read for pleasure in Irish as well. We are doing some work on that this year to see if there are meaningful interventions the Arts Council could be making in that regard. A lot of our focus to date has been more on the production end of things such as supporting new writers and supporting the publishers to bring things to print. All of those books need to be read, enjoyed and shared, so we are looking at that. Childrens Books Ireland is a key organisation we support, and the work it does is critical in the support it gives to children's writers and illustrators. It is very good in the supports it offers to schools, libraries and others that are getting books into kids' hands. The news about the funding for school libraries was welcome and Childrens Books Ireland was quick out of the traps with recommended reading guides, which included work within the Irish language.

I will go back to the Chairman's first question and we have been encouraged in recent years and in the past 18 months that some of our organisations that might have been a little bit slower to see Irish language literature as a core part of what they are doing have been making great strides in that area and have been developing their policies in that regard. For example, Childrens Books Ireland has just engaged an Irish language officer who will work with it. The Irish Writers Centre is developing an Irish language strategy, and Poetry Ireland has an introduction series that has been running for years and now it has an Irish language element to it as well. The Poetry Aloud competition was another successful initiative it had done through English for many years and now it is partnering with Imram to do it in Irish as well. A lot of good work is happening there, which we are trying to encourage as much as possible. A lot of policy is about encouraging and making things more visible.

On the writing question, there is work to do there and the Chairman was talking about the next generation of Irish writers. Just like with reading, we are supporting a number of organisations that are working with young people on writing. The most prominent of those is Fighting Words, which is the organisation Roddy Doyle helped to found. It is working through the Irish language as well and we have been supporting it to do so.