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

The mark of respect - the actual doing, not just the saying - that I propose on behalf of Fianna Fáil which I pledge to implement is that the cultural policy of the State will not be handed down from above. It will not arrive from a Government Department as a fait accompli. It will be an outcome of a democratic conversation here in the Dáil, the people's assembly.

I say to the arts organisations listening here in the Gallery and watching online around the country, that Fianna Fáil, with others across the House, will ensure that their voices are heard. Those who are expert and who have made it their lives' vocation to be artists will lead in forming Ireland's arts policy, Culture 2025.

The proposal my party will make to our colleagues on the Oireachtas committee is that they as individual artists, as companies and as resource organisations, including Dance Ireland, Theatre Forum and Visual Artists Ireland as well as the National Campaign for the Arts, will be invited and will be heard. We will turn to the Arts Council, whose role includes that of giving advice. It is time we sought advice. It is time we listened to advice. It is a pity it was not done sooner, but it will be done now. That is our promise and our pledge today.

In his speech in the Kennedy Centre on 17 May last, at a gala celebration of the best of Irish arts, the Taoiseach quoted President John F. Kennedy who said, one month before he died: "I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the artist". I did not serve with Jack Kennedy; I did not know him. Alas, he was not a friend of mine. However, Deputy Enda Kenny is no Jack Kennedy. That night's event in the Kennedy Centre was the Taoiseach's first public engagement with our arts and culture since his re-election to office on 6 May. It was his first outing abroad since the centenary of the Rising and the reduction of the political space for culture at the Cabinet table. It was an unwitting showcase of the unimportance of the artist for the Fine Gael Government. The treatment of artists as performers who provide a backdrop but have no further function could not have been more insensitively or cruelly juxtaposed with the glamour of the occasion in Washington.

Today, we are here to begin to right that wrong. We are here to put in place arrangements whereby artists will be the leaders of our cultural policy. The Thirty-second Dáil can, and I believe it will, ensure that artists are reinstated as the leaders of our cultural policy.

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