Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To go back to Mr. Rainey, and having listened to what Mr. Yates said, from my time going through many development plans as a councillor and looking at new areas being developed, and from the sustainable point of view, we need that across the board, not just with arts, but in terms of sporting facilities, educational facilities and so on. I have seen it so many times with planners. Planners are good people, but an engineer, for example, might think a particular way and will draw a box and state that is where the sports pitch might be. It comes down to who is going to operate it and who is going to be the club or the arts committee that is going to occupy that space. Those are the discussions. That is the benefit of the discussion here today in this committee room in that it then permeates down into council chambers.

Waterford and Kilkenny are great examples of the cultural art that exists in the very fabric of the city. We tried to do something similar in Navan, where I am from. Shane Donnelly, our late town clerk who tragically passed away ten years ago, started an audio walking tour and, having access to money from the then arts scheme, created a walking tour trail around the town, with an audio tour for people as they went around. In terms of the improvement or the roll-out of that, as Senator Malcolm Byrne said, there are many fine pieces of art lobbed onto the side of motorways. It was great that it was being used for the arts community and great that it was being done. We had a couple of creative managers in Navan who took those monuments and walked down into the centre of town to find better locations, and they are seen by and enjoyed by far more people. I ask Mr. Kehoe to give a refinement of that. Waterford is a great example of a cultural space in terms of the Viking Quarter and so on, and other towns would aspire to be as good as it is.