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

The Creative Youth plan to enable the creative potential of every young person was published in December 2017 as one of the five pillars of the Creative Ireland programme. One of the key measures taken to support young people's engagement at community level has been the establishment of Cruinniú na nÓg, as I mentioned earlier. It is the day when every young person in Ireland can experience something new and exciting and something to spark and nurture their creative skills. As with many other events and activities, unfortunately, the necessary public health measures meant that we had to shift much of the programme online and undertake it virtually. However, the engagement was still happening and that was the key point. It ensured that every child in Ireland had access to Cruinniú na nÓg activities and also enabled us to reach children in the Irish diaspora. It was interesting that what happened during Covid-19, therefore, was the broadening out of such activities.

Moving to creative schools, and similar to the response to a previous question asked by the Deputy, over the last year and a half I have sought to ensure that initiatives such as the Creative Schools programme place a particular focus on supporting young people at risk of marginalisation. To that end, I provided resources last year to enable the Arts Council to increase capacity within creative schools with additional places, 10% of the total, all of which were targeted at DEIS schools. I will be making an announcement tomorrow with my colleague, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, about new schools entering the Creative Schools programme from May 2023. There is a policy, therefore, of providing more access at all times to the arts for more children.

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