Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

The present economic circumstances will impact on some of the points the Deputy is making and it would be foolish to think otherwise. I am conscious of that and I am trying to track through the local authorities, the Arts Council and other bodies what exactly is happening to ascertain the impact. I am also getting the message back that people can be smarter, more efficient and more productive with less — and they are saying that. The scale of the increase in the arts funding in recent years was phenomenal — and rightly so. There has been a 72% increase in arts funding in the past four or five years. The level of funding has hardly gone back in terms of the past year or two. It is a question of trying to get more value, squeeze more out of it with people doing less. There may be some jobs lost here and there. I suppose that is inevitable to some degree. People will also make some career choice moves. At this stage what is recognised is that we are happy that we did not get mauled. We have taken our share. We do not want to take any more pain. We want to get on now with what we are doing and want to plan on that basis. Perhaps when we return for parliamentary questions in the House in couple of months time I may have more information for the Deputies on that specific point.

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