Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach and I welcome all our guests. It has been an interesting debate. I thank our guests most sincerely for their work.

Having been a councillor for 17 years, I would be unashamedly pro-local government and the work that local authorities do. As Mr. Rainey has said, that the local authorities make up the second biggest source of funding for the arts should not be underestimated. Indeed, I remember working with a former county manager in Carlow, who was our town manager, Mr. Joe Crockett, a Cork man, who was instrumental in delivering the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan when I was mayor of Navan and in making sure that we got the budget, etc., in place with the help of the then Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Síle de Valera, to achieve that. When one has good people in local government, great things can happen in a town. Local government is probably the driving force in that regard.

I welcome everyone and thank them for the work that they do. I remember interviewing Mr. Yeates on the work he spearheads in Dublin when I was a journalist many years ago.

Mr. Rainey mentioned the rural regeneration fund. This day last week we welcomed the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, to Meath to open the new theatre, cultural and library centre, which cost €9 million, in Trim. We also opened St. Kinneth's centre in Ballivor, a rural village in south Meath, which was a disused falling-down church of Ireland that was 200 years old. That is now a new cultural space in a tiny village in the south of the county. The funding in this regard is provided from the rural regeneration fund. It is a little like what Mr. Yeates said in terms of thinking outside of the arts, which means that instead of the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, being involved, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, is delivering. This is a new source of funding. Those are two projects opened in Meath last week at a cost of over €10 million. We have opened two new cultural spaces in those places. That is significant.

I want to ask the CCMA about the co-ordination in other counties regarding the great work everyone here today is doing. That work is clearly evident. We asked practitioners from the Arts Council and others here a couple of weeks ago the counties that are not doing so well. How can the standard that those here are setting in their various counties be achieved elsewhere?