Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is a good news story without a shadow of a doubt. It secures the future of the National Symphony Orchestra. For a period, its future existence was imperilled. It is positive that it is being put on a statutory framework after the transfer earlier this year and that it is being matched with additional money to reinforce that and try to bring it up to full strength. I commend the Minister on that. The NCH is a very good home for the NSO and the choirs, the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, RTÉ Cór na nÓg and RTÉ Cór Linn. All that is very positive but it is also worth pondering some of the lessons of the difficult period that the orchestra went through where it had to fight for its existence. I do not want to claim huge knowledge of it but I was aware of the campaign when it was worried about its existence. I refer the Minister to a good article I read in preparation for the debate, which she may have read herself but it is well worth reading. It is by Dr. Adrian Smith, assistant lecturer in musicology at the TU Dublin Conservatoire. He makes a number of comments that should have a bearing on the Minister's attitude to this issue and hopefully have. From some the comments she made in her contribution, I think she is aware of at least some of these issues. RTÉ has said it has mixed emotions about the transfer. Dr. Smith suggests that maybe that is not the full truth because the problem was that RTÉ saw the symphony orchestra as a financial burden and that was a problem. That is because of the financial pressures that RTÉ felt and that resulted in the orchestra being understrength and not having a main conductor for quite a while. When the RTÉ Philharmonic, as I think it was originally called, was set up, it had 62 members of the orchestra. That went up in its heyday to 89. There has been some improvement but Dr. Smith's article, which was written earlier this year, suggested that it was only at approximately 72 and, therefore, was well short of the numbers that it needed and that it had at its height what he describes as the golden era of NSO in the early 1990s. It then took a major hit, as the arts generally took a hammering, during the austerity period. The NSO felt the impact of that with a considerable reduction in numbers. Dr. Smith argues that unless we get the NSO back up to the numbers it had in its heyday, it will be below what is required to perform the full repertoire of classical programming. He suggest the lack of numbers led to an over-reliance on freelance or casual performers where the full-time performers did not know from week to week or from month to month who they were performing with and that this seriously undermined morale among those in the orchestra and the conditions needed for creativity. That is an important insight. We have what we are now rightly seeing as a national cultural institution; a vital part of our heritage and, to use the language of Maura McGrath, the chairperson of the National Concert Hall, "the custodian of Ireland's musical heritage".

It is a very important thing to be the custodian of Ireland's musical heritage. In that important role we need to really value that institution. We need to value the performers and ensure they are paid properly. As Deputy Ó Cathasaigh said, they may not be in it to get rich, but they need to live. We cannot have vital parts of our national cultural institutions, in this case our musical heritage, being placed in a precarious position. Some of those involved in the NSO are in precarious situations and are operating not only to their detriment but also to the detriment of the full-time musicians and also to the detriment of cohesion. Therefore, the conditions that lend themselves to creativity, which is what all this is about, are being undermined.

The Minister referred to wanting to get the orchestra back up to strength and providing an additional €8 million to do so. It is critical that we engage with the performers to ensure that is actually the case. We need to get it up to the strength needed so that it is secure into the future and we are not over-reliant on people operating on a freelance or casual basis where there is a turnover of people. That is undermining the cohesion and creativity of the NSO.

Adrian Smith's article goes on to suggest that certain things should be done. Now that we have made this positive move, the orchestra needs to build a new sense of identity. He suggests that it should be given its own website in order to project its identity. This also relates to the positive changes in the NCH over recent years. As he puts it in the article, there was a time, maybe that still lingers, when the NCH may have been seen as a little bit snooty and a bit "up there". We need to work to undermine that perception. I must confess to my shame that I think it was only about eight or nine years ago I first walked into the National Concert Hall to see Martin Hayes and I was incredibly impressed.

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