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

I am pleased to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate on budget 2017. As Fianna Fáil spokesperson on arts and heritage, I welcome the modest increases in funding for the Arts Council, Culture Ireland, the Council of National Cultural Institutions and the Irish Film Board. However, we must acknowledge the reality. The arts, culture and film budget was increased from €156.5 million to €188.5 million in 2016, but it is to be reduced to €158.3 million in 2017, a cut of 16%. This is a retrograde step following the additional investment made by the State in the arts and culture sector to fund the commemorative programme this year. The same investment should have been made in the Arts Council.

Fianna Fáil has a strong tradition of supporting the arts and culture sector. It has always acknowledged the impressive contribution the arts community has made to the country. We are committed to protecting the independence of the arts community and ensuring a stable, sustainable and secure funding model for the arts through progressive increases in State expenditure in line with improvements in the economy and the public finances. We are committed to enabling full community engagement to benefit from State funding for the arts and supporting the arm’s length principle to promote the Arts Council’s autonomy in distributing State funding to artists and arts organisations. We are committed to enhancing provision for the arts in the education sector and, in particular, the roll-out of local arts in education partnerships through ETBs across the country. We are committed to ensuring local authorities will implement local arts action plans which benefit local communities and artists and bring the arts directly to the people.

The budget presents minimal measures to cope with the fundamental challenges posed by Brexit. In the light of this, encouraging active co-operation between the Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland is now more important than ever. In June Fianna Fáil placed the arts front and centre in a Private Members' motion which called for sustained increases in arts funding. The motion won cross-party backing and reflected widespread public support for improved arts funding. I am delighted that an additional €5 million will be allocated to the Arts Council, with a further €2 million for the Irish Film Board and €1 million for Culture Ireland.

3 o’clock

The arts are essential to the well-being and advancement of the people and a thriving arts and culture sector can make a positive contribution to the country as a whole. Not only do the arts have an intrinsic value of their own in national life, they also represent an important economic sector in terms of employment and tourism. It is, therefore, important that further increases are secured in the years ahead. In our election manifesto we committed to year-on-year increases in funding for the arts and remain committed to this. For our part, Fianna Fáil believes rapid progress should be made in successive budgets to increased our allocation for the arts.

I have previously urged more funding too for the film industry. I think we all accept that the indigenous film and television production sector has a significant cultural and economic impact in Ireland. It is a sector that has enjoyed many successes in recent years and competes well on the world stage. However, there was a growing belief that assistance was needed, particularly in the form of increased funding for the Irish Film Board. Therefore, I am pleased that we have extra funding approved in that way. There is a €1 million allocation to the Heritage Council, which is less than what I had hoped to see. While the allocation has been warmly welcomed by the chief executive, we had made a very strong case for an additional €5 million. For every €1 spent by the Heritage Council, the tourism industry generates €4.40 through increased tourism revenues. More than 75% of its annual budget is allocated to creating and supporting employment in the heritage sector. When the revised estimates were published in December of last year, additional funding was secured for the Arts Council. Therefore, if there is a repeat of this in December I hope the Heritage Council will benefit from it.

Moving away from my own portfolio, we have also seen the introduction of the first-time buyers grant scheme. It will only drive to push up prices and risk another boom and bust within the sector. A reduction in construction costs has not been forthcoming. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, as in many counties across the country, there are not the new homes within the county for young people and young first-time buyers to actually access this new scheme. In Cavan-Monaghan, there have been no builds for the past decade. I am sure it is the same across the country. There are a lot of builds that are one-off private houses. Houses to buy are in high demand but they are not available in Cavan-Monaghan. Therefore, this first-time buyers grant is null and void when it comes to buying new homes in Cavan-Monaghan because they do not exist.

This is a huge problem. A lot of my constituents will not be able to avail of the scheme. In that way, it could be argued that it is discriminating towards young people and young buyers, particularly in rural Ireland. I have had numerous calls since budget day from very concerned young people who are trying to get their heads around the fact that the second-hand houses will not be a part of the scheme and that they therefore cannot avail of it. This initiative will see first-time buyers chasing more than 10,000 new homes and apartments earmarked for construction next year. The scheme is useless without accompanying measures to increase supply. It could exacerbate the housing crisis by overheating the new builds market, which, in turn, will lead to increased house prices.

I will conclude with two other observations that I have found most pertinent within my own constituency, one of which is the lack of the local improvement scheme, LIS. I am disappointed to see that this has not been reintroduced in this budget. Again, it is forgetting about rural Ireland. I know that the Government may state there are discretionary funds available and that it is up to the local authorities to take the money out of that. The local authorities have suffered cut after cut over the last eight or ten years. My local authority has suffered a 48% cut on roads. There are no discretionary funds. My constituency is made up particularly of a farming community in which farmers and families depend on getting in and out of their lanes in good weather and bad. The LIS was hugely important. It was introduced in the House by my own late uncle, Paddy Smyth, and that was a long time ago. As far as I know, it ran up until 2008. It is very disappointing not to see that scheme re-introduced. I am sure every Deputy in a rural constituency has had the same experience.

I do not see the Brexit-proofing that I would have liked to have seen in the budget. It is of little consolation to the mushroom growers in my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan who at this time are on their knees due to the plummeting sterling prices. Jobs are being lost. Some 95% of the produce goes to the United Kingdom. One local grower told me that the cost of exporting is due to the plummeting sterling price. Given that situation, many businesses are under pressure and some have been wiped out of business.

See this speech in context