Mr. Damien McGlynn:

My wish list started with multi-annual funding, which everybody else has referenced. We also talked quite a bit about making capital funding more accessible to a range of groups. It is important that it is not all necessarily funnelled through local authorities as it needs to address the many issues we have talked about.

My other wish will not cost anything. It feels to me like pretty much everything we have talked about here needs to be addressed by joined-up thinking that comes from recognising the status of arts and culture at both national and local government. We have heard about great arts officers that are ploughing away doing their work, but it is not recognised necessarily in every local authority at chief executive level.

I have spent years referring to the sports sector as an example. Mention was made of the GAA, which is a fantastic example of incredible infrastructure right across the country. If you go into any village in Ireland there will be a GAA club with a clubhouse, pitch and everything but it is not the same with arts and culture. The question is how we get to that sort of level. There is something for the arts sector to reflect on in terms of how well sports - the GAA is a good example here – understand the ecology of grassroots, amateur professional audience. The issue with the GAAGo Games and people subscribing and participating is that it is all one ecology and in the arts sector we miss a trick on that a little bit and we need to find a way to join that up as well as getting the recognition at higher levels.