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

The Creative Ireland programmeis a cross-Government initiative to mainstream culture and creativity in the life of the nation and to promote individual, community and national well-being. As the Deputy may be aware, the programme is based on five pillars: enabling the creative potential of every child, enabling creativity in every community, investing in our creative and cultural infrastructure, establishing Ireland as a centre of excellence in media production and unifying our global reputation.

The second pillar - enabling creativity in every community - is being implemented primarily through our local authorities. This is because local authorities are the primary instruments of community engagement and have a particular capacity for local programme delivery, especially in the context of citizen engagement.

The culture teams already established in each local authority area under pillar 2 have put a considerable amount of work and time into producing local culture and creativity plans for 2017, which were published last May and included a long list of local cultural projects, events and initiatives taking place nationwide.

An allocation of €2 million was made available - €1 million from my Department and €1 million from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to support the implementation of these plans.

Each local authority is now in the process of drawing up more detailed five year strategic creativity plans, which will be published in early 2018. As part of this development, each culture team is hosting a variety of collaborative workshops, public meetings and discussions across the country to discuss its strategy and future cultural development as well as to listen and respond to local audiences. These strategies will be accompanied by a yearly culture and creativity action plan.

I have already doubled my Department's allocation to the local authority programme in 2018 to €2 million and I look forward to working with the local authorities next year to build on the success of 2017.

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