Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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22. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the amount of funding that will be delivered under pillar two of the Creative Ireland plan; and her views on whether this is sufficient. [12037/17]

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Creative Ireland is the Government's recent policy document for enhancing Ireland's creative sector. Creative Ireland is made up of five pillars, with pillar 2 referring to the links with the local authorities. Under pillar 2 each local authority will be encouraged to create and establish a cultural team comprising the arts officers, the librarians, the heritage officers and so on and to develop a cultural plan. How much funding has the Minister allocated under pillar two and does she believe it is sufficient?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Taoiseach and I launched the Creative Ireland Programme-Clár Éire Ildánach 2017–2022 on the 8 December 2016 as the Government legacy programme for Ireland 2016 and as the main implementation vehicle for the priorities identified in Culture 2025-Éire Ildánach, the draft cultural policy which I published in July 2016. This is a cross-Government initiative to mainstream culture and creativity in the life of the nation and to promote individual, community and national well-being.

The second pillar of the programme, enabling creativity in every community, will be implemented primarily through our local authorities as they are the primary instruments of local community engagement. Each local authority has now established a culture team bringing together arts officers, librarians, heritage officers, museum curators, archivists and other relevant personnel led by a director of services, with a nominated person as Creative Ireland co-ordinator. A dedicated budget of €1 million from the overall Creative Ireland programme budget of €5 million has been allocated to the local authorities towards the implementation of initiatives under pillar 2, including the aforementioned culture teams, the publication of a culture and creativity plan for each county, reflecting at local level the overall structure and aims of the national programme, and the implementation of Cruinniú na Cásca, a programme of arts activities and events on Easter Monday.

I understand that additional support will also be made available to the local authorities for these initiatives by the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government.

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I wholeheartedly welcome the initiative. Cultural events do not only happen in Ireland's main cities but, as we know, culture is embedded in rural Ireland as much as anywhere else. This policy echoes one brought forward by my party some years ago proposing that all local authorities formulate an action plan for arts and heritage. The current level of funding is likely to be insufficient to support the real development of our towns and villages. With 31 local authorities in Ireland, each will receive approximately €33,000. This is a serious cut in funding compared with the allocation in 2016 when €3 million was allocated to local communities to implement their counties' arts and commemorative plans. For many local authorities this funding is much needed. Given the Government's previous cuts in funding for the arts and heritage sector, this is quite a significant reduction in the amount of funding they will have with which to work. During the period from 2011 to 2106, many of the main arts agencies operating within the State suffered massive funding cuts of up to 40% and that was particularly pronounced in our rural communities. Will the Minister comment on the funding issues I outlined?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy mentioned the local authorities received a funding allocation of €3 million last year. That was made up of €1 million from my Department, €1 million from the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and €1 million from IPB Insurance. That allocation funded more than 3,500 events nationwide. There was a wonderful collaboration between local authorities and the 2016 programme. They did tremendous work and made a small amount of funding go a long way.

Funding under Creative Ireland is enabling money to put culture and creativity at the centre of communities in every county in the country. It is important that the €1 million for local authorities is not viewed in isolation.

We are increasing funding across the board. As the Deputy is aware, I increased the funding to the Arts Council by €5 million in the 2017 budget. This will support arts groups all across the country. Likewise, I increased funding to the Heritage Council by €1 million, and we all know the fantastic work that body does, particularly as part of National Heritage Week, which again involves a group-up approach at community level. I was also delighted to announce recently the €9 million arts and culture capital scheme in Cavan.

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I am curious about the Minister's cultural teams. Will they involve the education and training boards, ETBs? Where are we going with our local arts and education partnerships? The Minister talked about initiatives with schools, but I hope that this model, of which she herself was very supportive, has not been dropped and that the ETBs will be involved in these cultural teams in some way or another because they have much to offer, as she knows. It is somewhat unclear whether the funding is intended just to develop a plan or whether further funding will come on stream to implement it. How it will be implemented is the huge concern for arts practitioners and arts and cultural centres around the country. Without ring-fenced funding, implementation of local authorities' plans will be seriously jeopardised and a hugely important point of all this is how we will actually implement these nice plans.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As I said, funding of €1 million has been made available to local authorities under Creative Ireland. This is enabling funding and will attract other funding. Apart from this, as the Deputy knows, I was delighted with the €9 million arts and culture capital scheme. This scheme is the most significant investment in our regional arts centres in a decade, and 85% of the funding went to projects outside of Dublin. This was about reaching out to arts groups country-wide and Townhall in Cavan is a great example. It was awarded €750,000. Of course, the Deputy is very familiar with it and she will know the people there have been crying out for funding for years. They submitted an excellent application and I was delighted to be able to support them. There are strong synergies between pillar 2 of Creative Ireland, "enabling creativity in every community", and pillar 4 of the Action Plan for Rural Development, "fostering culture and creativity in rural communities". Pillar 1 of Creative Ireland, "enabling the creative potential of every child", to which the Deputy referred, will go to the heart of our local communities through our schools and other venues where children access arts, music, drama and other disciplines. This will include the arts in education charter and my Department working with the Department of Education and Skills to make sure every child has access to the arts.