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

I am curious about the Minister's cultural teams. Will they involve the education and training boards, ETBs? Where are we going with our local arts and education partnerships? The Minister talked about initiatives with schools, but I hope that this model, of which she herself was very supportive, has not been dropped and that the ETBs will be involved in these cultural teams in some way or another because they have much to offer, as she knows. It is somewhat unclear whether the funding is intended just to develop a plan or whether further funding will come on stream to implement it. How it will be implemented is the huge concern for arts practitioners and arts and cultural centres around the country. Without ring-fenced funding, implementation of local authorities' plans will be seriously jeopardised and a hugely important point of all this is how we will actually implement these nice plans.

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