Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We brought in the artistic community to the Cabinet sub-committee and they were very appreciative of the consideration of a programme for Creative Ireland. The fact it will be monitored from the Department of the Taoiseach means it has particular clout in terms of co-ordination, such as applied during the centenary celebratory events for 1916. It was obvious during those commemorative centenary events that communities all over the country displayed outstanding leadership and creativity in so many ways, from the children doing their little poems, plays and pictures and so on, to receiving the national flag in every school, to older children writing their proclamations and their version of the Constitution, to their elders and seniors, parents and grandparents, talking about their involvement in 1916. It is that creative force, that imaginative force, that will prevent communities from fracturing once they are allowed to participate.

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