Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)

Along with others, I congratulate the Minister of State on her recent wedding and wish her every success. I appreciate her being here to take this debate this evening.

We are talking about the role of amateur theatre and musicals right around the State in all of our constituencies. In terms of the numbers who are actually involved in amateur theatre and musicals, it is estimated that after the GAA, it is the largest voluntary movement in the country. Think of the people who are involved, both onstage and behind the scenes in our theatres, providing those productions and the audiences right around the country for whom they provide great enjoyment, but also the role of amateur theatre in challenging us and making us think as well as entertaining us.

Even though a lot of these productions are amateur, the Minister of State will be very much aware that the quality is professional. In order to attain that, it costs a lot of money. A lot of these groups spend a lot of time fundraising to be able to put on those productions.

Their national representative bodies, the Drama League of Ireland, the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland, and the Association of Irish Musical Societies, which run festivals and try to ensure standards and provide training programmes, essentially do not receive any form of State support. While some support was provided during Covid - we all know about the impact on the arts then - we have not seen a structured way of funding and supporting these organisations, so that they can both manage their activity at a national level but also help with development, training and education costs.

The Oireachtas committee on the arts, of which I was a member in the previous Oireachtas as well as in this one, recommended clearly that a funding stream would be put in place. This is not covered at the moment by the Arts Council, although when the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, appeared before the Oireachtas committee recently, he did indicate that this may be a channel for so doing it. Given the importance of all of these groups in helping to build our communities, we should have some way of channelling funding to support their management and administration at national level but also their development at local level.

When I look at what happens with sporting organisations – the Minister of State is aware that I am very supportive of how we support sport – national governing bodies in sport receive funding through Sport Ireland to support the administration of the organisation but also for development and engagement and to build activity within the sport. We do not have the same level of commitment in the arts. The Minister of State knows how important the arts, theatre and musical groups are in building communities and we must consider a structured system of support for all of those organisations.

Within my constituency, we are very fortunate to have three very active musical societies in the Gorey Musical Society, the Carnew Musical Society and the Avonmore Musical Society in Arklow. We have wonderful theatre groups the length and breadth of the constituency. I will not start to name them because there is a danger that I will forget some. They run from Tinahely to Kilmuckridge. I have been very involved with the Gorey Little Theatre group. We all know the difference these groups make within our communities but, given the growing costs and challenges, we must support their development. The State does need to step in and provide resourcing.

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