Mr. Kieran Kehoe:

I thank the Senator for that commentary. It does not happen overnight. We have been implementing this plan for decades. It has been led by our numerous chief executives. In particular, our current chief executive in the past 15 years has really driven forward the delivery of a very strong and vibrant city centre. The culture and arts piece is central. To go back to the Senator’s comment on planning - and I have planning as my area as well - what we are trying to do now is create places and communities where people can live and that they can experience, not just housing and all the different infrastructure. It is where people can really live and have a good quality of life. That is our main aim. However, that does not happen overnight. Waterford has had massive regeneration over the last 15 to 20 years, but it has been done in an overall planned way. It has been led by our architects, who have been engaging with our cultural team, engaging with our head of museums, engaging with our infrastructural teams, so we are creating this overall sense of a place and space which provides that vibrancy in which all parts of our society succeed, but particularly through our arts and culture piece.

The Senator mentioned the Viking Quarter and the numerous museums, but that has been developed over years. A more recent one is the Museum of the Irish Wake, which opened last week. It is a continuous piece of growing the offering. We found that as that offering has grown, we are bringing in more people and people want to be part of that success. It is about us creating that culture of wanting to be supportive of the artists and those creative people who can really deliver.

On the Senator’s point regarding the trail, using Waterford Walls as an example, people will obviously see all the beautiful buildings and the way they impact, but there is now a QR code on the bottom of each one and a Waterford Walls app. If people click on that, they will get the full story of the artist and what their thoughts were, and it will lead to the next one. There is this trail around it, so it is not just the beautiful piece of art that people see but a full story is being told as it weaves through the city in general and the city centre. We are then linking that with our other offerings, whether it be the medieval museum, silver museum or time museum. It all comes together as one piece, rather than each individual piece.

That is led by us, as the management team and senior leaders in an organisation, and it is not being done in isolation. It is done as part of the bigger picture. Referencing back to what Ms Doherty and others have said, the development plan sets that tone, along with our arts plans and how they integrate.