Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

I hear what the Minister of State is saying but the real-life workings of this are that those grants he talks about are not available to those types of festivals. They are not available because of the music they are putting on. That is for a different type of festival. They have all tried it. The Minister of State is not getting that. There is no other real support that is available. Even during Covid, we got no support, but the 9% VAT rate was a benefit. As I said, I did not expect the Government to accept this amendment. In reality, if I were the Minister, 9% on concerts, because it is not on festivals, would be on ticket sales and, therefore, would apply to Croke Park and all of that, and it should not; it should be targeted. It should be about a policy point of view.

There is a serious issue here. Ten festivals have closed down in the last couple of years. I am telling the Minister of State now, there are going to be more festivals closing down. The Government cannot say on one hand that it supports the arts and then not give a stage for the arts. It just cannot do it. MCD will do some festivals; it is doing some festivals. It is moving into those spaces and all the rest. However, we have to be able to do those independent regional festivals, such as the ones that are still operating in Cork, Galway and elsewhere. It is really important. It is great to see a new festival in Roscommon. There was no music festival in Roscommon up until a couple of years ago. However, there needs to be some type of support and there is no support whatsoever. I am making the point that they all expected it, or rather, because I cannot speak for all of them, there was an expectation that the 9% VAT rate would have applied to them. There is no reason in my view that it should not. It did in the past. If the Minister of State is not accepting this amendment, I am putting on record that the existing levels of support do not exist for this type of festival, as I said, bar the Fáilte Ireland grant, which is between €2,000 or €3,000. Local authorities are given it to dish out to all different types of festivals. That is the only type of support that we are giving. The Government cannot have it both ways. It is going to take the platform away from the artists and from that whole industry that supports them in the regions if we do not move.

We have already lost ten independent festivals in the space of a couple of years. Sixty have been lost in Britain. It is happening all over the place. It is because of behavioural change and costs. There has to be some type of response, or maybe the view is that they are not sustainable and we are just going to leave it Croke Park, the Phoenix Park and maybe Thomond Park in the future. If that happens, it will be a very sad day because a lot of musical acts who hope to play Croke Park need these platforms to get there.