Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his encouragement for the scheme. I wish to avail of this opportunity to ask the Minister in these difficult times to request his Department to engage more actively with other Departments to ensure that this scheme is taken up.

While the Minister is correct to mention art works by our roads and in schools, it has become a feature of life recently that the NRA and local authorities supervising water and sewerage works and schools development projects do not always ensure the percent-for-art scheme has been used. In some cases, developers of the initiatives in question were not even conscious that the percent-for-art scheme was still available.

The scheme encourages collaboration between artists and local communities. Public art must be developed and created with local ownership in mind. It is only by the Minister's Department ensuring that sponsoring Departments are active in promoting the scheme as an ideal that maximum use will be made of it.

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