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

As I outlined in my earlier answer, we provide support in a range of ways; for example, through the Arts Council, which has seen an increase in funding since I became Minister, through what we do in Culture Ireland and Creative Ireland, and through the support we provide to poets under the basic income for the arts scheme. I can forward to the Deputy exact details of the range of funding that comes from my Department, which is pretty vast.

We have such a proud, strong tradition of poetry. We are known right across the globe for our poetry and poets from Yeats to Heaney. Sadly, over recent years we have lost some of our greatest poets, including Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Derek Mahon and Brendan Kennelly, but they have left a remarkable legacy that will live on for generations to come. I am a proud County Monaghan woman from the "stony grey soil", where "the bicycles go by in twos and threes" as Patrick Kavanagh wrote in "Inniskeen Road: July Evening". My brother is a published poet, so I have a natural grá for this area.

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