Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The stated mission of my Department is "to enrich Irish society by supporting the growth of a competitive and sustainable tourism industry and increasing access to and participation in sport, the arts and culture". Having particular regard to the cultural sector, my role as Minister is to recognise the social and economic roles of that sector by promoting and encouraging artistic expression, cultural awareness and participation through an appropriate policy, legislative and resource framework. Inherent in this role is the formulation, development and evaluation of policy and structures to create an environment that enables arts and culture to flourish, the development of the national cultural institutions and supporting the development of other arts and cultural projects at national, regional and local level.

The State's national collecting institutions provide access to their extensive and impressive collections free of charge. All of our national cultural institutions provide free educational and family friendly events throughout the year, which have particular appeal for the younger audience. While my Department provides funding to our national cultural institutions, the board of each institution is responsible for all operational matters relating to it and I do not have a statutory function in respect of day-to-day operational matters.

My Department also provides funding to certain other cultural bodies that hold collections of national importance or collections that are unique and relate to matters of national interest or international culture. These institutions and their collections are accessible to the public. They include the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Archbishop Marsh's library, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Irish Architectural Archives, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, the National Print Museum, Foynes Flying Boat Museum, Limerick and the Science Gallery.

In addition, funding is provided to projects that meet specific cultural needs and support the high level goals of my Department. Without detailing these individually, they include projects that enhance Ireland's cultural patrimony and access to it, for example, digitisation, reproduction, translation and-or publication of historical documents, including the digitisation of the 1901 and 1911 censuses, the translation of the History of the Capuchins in Ireland and the church records project.

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