Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am very much aware of the situation regarding the Yeats Society Sligo. Officials in my Department have been in regular communication with this organisation. As the Deputy has pointed out, the society has been in existence for 61 years and runs the long-standing and well-recognised annual Yeats summer school, which reaches out to students and lecturers in universities in major cities across the globe. Outside of this, the society runs a permanent Yeats exhibition, offers talks to visitors, locals and schools, and runs poetry events and creative writing and visual art classes for young and old.

As the Deputy mentioned, we, and other local Deputies, met with the Yeats Society Sligo last October. I wish to acknowledge the Deputy's strong advocacy and support for the arts in Ireland, and the Yeats Society Sligo. I subsequently received a request for annual funding required by the society to meet salary and operational costs. While it is challenging to consider entering into a new annual arrangement with any cultural body until the 2022 budget is decided, I will certainly be very mindful of the request in that context.

In the interim, I wish to inform the House that, in 2019, the society was awarded the maximum grant of €5,000 under the 2019 small local festival and summer schools scheme towards the annual Yeats summer school. Some 600 attendees participated across the nine-day event in 2019. No application was received from the society for this scheme in 2020. The results of the 2021 small local festival and summer schools scheme will be announced later this week, but I am happy to inform the House that, once again, the maximum grant of €5,000 will be awarded to the Yeats Society Sligo for its 2021 summer school. This is one of 28 projects awarded funding under the 2021 scheme, which has a total allocation of €96,391.

In addition, prior to the meeting in October, the Yeats Society Sligo was awarded the maximum grant of €20,000 under the audience re-engagement scheme for small, regional and specialised museums, which was a once-off scheme as part of my Department's response to the Covid-19 situation. The society has also applied under stream A of my Department's cultural capital scheme for 2019 to 2022 for building upgrades and a dedicated writers' room. The results of the application process relating to this scheme will be announced in the coming weeks.

On the wider matter, my Department provides annual funding to the National Library of Ireland, NLI, which houses the largest and most extensive W.B. Yeats collection anywhere in the world. The NLI also has a permanent Yeats exhibition, originally opened in 2006, which has since welcomed more than 1 million visitors. The significance and celebration of Yeats as one of the great giants of Irish and global literature is very much alive and the Department continues to have a core role in the preservation, display and dissemination of his work through institutions such as the NLI.

With regard to the Yeats Society Sligo's request, I have asked officials in my Department to assess the society's submission in the context of the 2022 budget. The provision of any funding would be in the context of an agreed strategy, possibly involving the local authority and other interests, with a timeframe and performance indicators for assessment of value in due course.

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