Ms Deborah Kelleher:

That is an interesting question. I can answer from the academy's perspective. I am going to use the example we are more comfortable with in the academy, namely, opera. Our opera training programme at bachelor level is exceptionally good. You would have to be stone mad to leave the country at undergraduate level to study opera; it is that good. Our singers win international competitions and get roles in major opera houses.

In order to do that, ten years ago, we committed a serious amount of money for education. I was struck by the comments of the gentleman from AIMS because our investment equated to the exact same sum. In our annual opera production - we are the only college in Ireland to offer an annual fully staged opera production - there is no change out of €60,000. For a small college, that is a lot to find. It is even more expensive for musical theatre because there are additional aspects such as dance, movement and amplification, so that would probably cost more.

What has made our opera programmes so successful is that real-life experience our singers have with professional directors and crews. They go out into postgraduate study or into the world ahead of the game. Musical theatre education in Ireland has not had committed Government support. There is the excellent work that Ms Masterson has been doing, and there is the Munster Technological University and Dundalk Institute of Technology, but this is an expensive education art form, so it needs ring-fenced additional support. The reward is that so many young people want to study there, so there is no shortage of supply. Moreover, as Ms Masterson said, musical theatre is probably the most popular art form in the world, aside from perhaps death metal, which probably has an unexpected calling.

There is the interest, the critical mass and the societal benefits to it; it just requires investment, but not on the scale of a national health service. For educational purposes, it is expensive to mount these productions, but for performers, musical directors, writers and everyone who is in training, that is the coalface where people really learn and that is where the funds are lacking.