Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I note to Ms Copeland that I received an FOI response from Government late last year on the €4.4 million spent on the Creative Ireland programme to date. A total of 30% of this money was spent on marketing, €760,000 on media advertising, €330,000 on social media and €192,000 on website development.

In the absence of any real return to pre-recession levels of arts funding from the Government, is it quite lavish to be spending so much on marketing? I accept that it is the first year of the initiative and that designers and printers, etc., play a part in marketing as well, but is it quite lavish to spend so much on this rather than directly supporting the work of artists?