Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I agree with the Minister. The importance of the arts goes beyond the importance of the jobs — important as they are. The only good news stories coming out of Ireland in the past six months have been from the arts, including the Oscar awards and the achievements of our writers, which is of great value to Ireland.

While it is great that we now have so many regional arts venues, as the Minister knows I have expressed concern in the past about them always being on the breadline and on the cusp of being unviable. With the reduction in touring, some of them will be in very dire financial straits. The safety net of local authority funding will probably disappear, as their income will be greatly reduced. Is there any way to track the viability of those venues over the next 12 months or so in order to ascertain the impact of the shortage of touring etc. and the reduction in their annual grants, including their maintenance grants, which is a major factor? Without a reasonable maintenance grant, some of those centres will need to close even from a health and safety point of view, which would undermine the point of having built them in the first place.

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