Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her news about cultural units within our local authorities. That comes as very welcome news. Culture, as we know, covers such a multitude of things and is probably the proper term when we are thinking about the arts. I would like the Minister to consider extending that. As she said herself, she saw the work on the ground of the local arts and education partnership. I compliment the Minister on the support she gave to the Cavan-Monaghan pilot project. I ask her to also consider rolling out those local arts and education partnerships nationally. We only have 16 education and training boards in the country and it would go a long way in terms of the engagement of the Department of the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Department of Education and Skills and the Arts Council. There is much to be gained from that because it has great value. I thank the Minister.

I thank all those in the Gallery and all the artists and representatives of the creative industry who have sat through this two and a half hour debate. I hope they feel it has been a fruitful debate. I thank the Members who contributed to the debate today and all who came to watch. Fianna Fáil did not put this motion before the Dáil on our own behalf or for any political purpose. It is for a broader, deeper issue at stake, namely, our country's art and culture. Support for, understanding of and empathy with the arts should be intrinsic. It should be built into a republic. The arts, and I speak of the broadest expression of our culture including our heritage and popular culture, should be accessible and available to all our people.

The arts are not a luxury, rather they are a necessity. People who have no voice in the public conversation look to artists to express their thoughts. Art is another sense, another language and another way of thinking. Without it, there is no way to live a full life. No wedding, funeral, or other important point in life can be passed or punctuated without the conscious setting of art. So it is with the State, which time and time again looks to the artists to mark its great days, and so it should be.

This Republic was founded out of events led by patriotic people for whom culture and the practice of the arts was central to themselves and to the movement they led. One hundred years later, artists were again called upon to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising. Once again, artists did Ireland proud. What could have had the texture of blandness or a sheen of false pomp was invested with the grit of truth by artists who, in every art form, are truth seekers. That is what artists are in society. They seek new insights to say what cannot be articulated. They seek to articulate what cannot be said.

Today in Dáil Éireann, many Deputies across the Chamber have conveyed what is being said by artists outside the Chamber and across the country. The increasingly intense public conversation among artists, their presence here today in such numbers, and the articulation by so many artists, arts organisations and the National Campaign for the Arts on their behalf of a profound sense of alienation from the State is striking. In a Republic that is alienated, that is an indictment. Years of cuts took their toll on a sector that at the height of State spending was only beginning to see levels of investment that had long been the norm across western Europe and elsewhere. What I find striking when talking with artists is their profound disillusionment with the disengagement of the Government from culture, from the arts, from any objective or outcome that is not a key performance indicator and from any conversation that is not a photo call. In the Government of their country, the country that beckons and calls them as required, there is no empathy, no feeling and no champion for the arts.

In this centenary year, during the anniversary and jubilee, as of old, the country's artists were called to its side but even before the curtain came down, the Government stepped in to switch off the lights.

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