Mr. Joe Hamill:

First, the sum is an initial allocation. We have been given €4 million to move our planning along this year. There is an indicative €1 million that will go towards helping the national cultural institutions to bring forward their commemoration programmes, exhibitions and so on. Bodies like the National Library of Ireland, the National Gallery of Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland will have various plans to come forward.

The Arts Council has been given €2 million to bring forward an arts programme which I hope it will announce fairly soon. That will probably involve things like commission work and so on.

A lot of work is being done on an education programme. We hope to have it in a fairly developed state over the next month or two.

We are working on a diaspora programme through our embassies and consulates. There are lots of different spokes of this project moving at the moment. I hope that in the next couple of months we will be in a position to have a much more detailed plan put forward. That is not to mention the official events that will take place anyway around parades and so on at the time.