James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to share a few brief thoughts on this report in this debate. I welcome the report and it is important that focus is placed on the arts and the supports that are required in terms of funding, Government structures and regulatory frameworks and how they all might work together to support everything from our small town or village festivals right through to professional artists and all the difficulties that attend to their livelihoods. It is a positive report but we must go further and begin to implement some of the actions outlined within. We must come up with further avenues for funding and support.

I have a particular hat on because I have an interest in research policy in general. The following applies to the arts as much as it does to history, economics, geography and other humanities subjects. There can sometimes be a tendency for Government policy to support research that is perceived as being commercially valuable or useful and that has a particular outcome in product development, be that a new widget, microchip or a new business process approach. It is every bit as valuable, if not more, that we invest in discovery research and frontier activities, be that a new artistic endeavour, historical manuscript or piece of archaeology, because those not only broaden the depth of human knowledge but also broaden the mind. A student who has successfully mastered the creative arts and humanities, who can take a history problem and apply creative thinking to why one particular side won or lost a battle, go far beyond the dates, facts and figures involved, and apply a creative analysis, is well equipped to deal with the challenges that life might throw at him or her in any walk of life.

I recently attended my local university, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The president of that college, Dr. Philip Nolan, told me about a student who had pursued a PhD in graphic novels. I remember the Batmanand Arkham Asylumgraphic novels although I have not read them for some time. This particular student conducted a PhD study in the art of the graphic novel. That might have appeared to be an arcane cul-de-sac of knowledge to pursue, but that student was headhunted by Google or another of the large tech firms because the labyrinthine processes that could navigate and describe a graphic novel turned out to be very apt for navigating the World Wide Web and the processes, loops and nodes that intersect within the Internet. That is proof that we find productivity and output, including commercial output, in unexpected quarters and it is always worthwhile advancing the font of human knowledge, advancing ourselves, and improving our educational attainment and the discovery process. It is worth funding that. It is worth funding for its own sake. There is a commercial metric that is sometimes applied too bluntly by the Government, but even using that base criteria, we can find that unexpected outcomes flow.

I am delighted to see some recommendations in the report around small town and village festivals. We all know the main streets in our local towns and villages, particularly our provincial main streets, are suffering. There are empty buildings in many cases and there are issues such as rates, rents and parking. There is a litany of issues that I will not go into now. Our main streets must be rediscovered and become new places that we imagine in different ways. Retail Ireland has coined the expression "weekend experience, midweek convenience". That means that our old main streets may not be the shopping centres and malls of the past or the places to get a pound of sausages or a pint of milk on a Wednesday evening, but they may instead become places where people congregate on a Saturday afternoon, a Friday night or a Sunday morning. They could be a part of a coffee shop culture whereby people gather to exchange views and debate in a public square. That is hugely supported by the development of festivals.

I was privileged to be involved as chair of the Midsummer Arts Festival when I was the mayor of Naas. That was an example of how we helped the rejuvenation of Naas town by putting a festival on the map one weekend a year. Many other groups put festivals on in the same town at different points on the calendar. We have seen success in the likes of Kilkenny, Galway and Dún Laoghaire. Many towns have taken this and run with it and have far more esteemed festival traditions than we have at present in Naas. We aspire to that because it is a formula for rejuvenation and reinventing our town centres as cultural hubs and as places to meet, gather, congregate and engage in cultural activities. I am delighted to see that specifically called out in the report as a recommended outcome.

The Minister and committee should examine how the funding models flow for those festivals because it is not always transparent or apparent how to attain funding and get support for those festivals. There are multiple potential different agencies to approach, including the Arts Council and others, but it is not always clear, coherent or consistent how one particular festival can draw down funding when another cannot.

I commend the report and my colleague, Deputy Niamh Smyth, who has been to the fore in working on the committee, the report and the recommendations therein. I also commend the rest of the committee and I wish the report and its implementation every success. I look forward to further consideration and, I hope, when the Midsummer Arts Festival is convened next summer, we will have funding to draw down and supports in place as a result of this.

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