Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said, funding of €1 million has been made available to local authorities under Creative Ireland. This is enabling funding and will attract other funding. Apart from this, as the Deputy knows, I was delighted with the €9 million arts and culture capital scheme. This scheme is the most significant investment in our regional arts centres in a decade, and 85% of the funding went to projects outside of Dublin. This was about reaching out to arts groups country-wide and Townhall in Cavan is a great example. It was awarded €750,000. Of course, the Deputy is very familiar with it and she will know the people there have been crying out for funding for years. They submitted an excellent application and I was delighted to be able to support them. There are strong synergies between pillar 2 of Creative Ireland, "enabling creativity in every community", and pillar 4 of the Action Plan for Rural Development, "fostering culture and creativity in rural communities". Pillar 1 of Creative Ireland, "enabling the creative potential of every child", to which the Deputy referred, will go to the heart of our local communities through our schools and other venues where children access arts, music, drama and other disciplines. This will include the arts in education charter and my Department working with the Department of Education and Skills to make sure every child has access to the arts.

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