Seanad debates

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

10:30 am

Photo of David NorrisDavid Norris (Independent)

I am aware we are only allowed raise one issue, but I wish to agree wholeheartedly with what my other colleagues, particularly Senator Zappone, have said.

The issue I wish to raise is in response to Senator Bacik, whom I thank for her kind words. She is right that in times of economic difficulty in particular, the celebration of the imagination is something that helps to lift all of us. It also has an economic benefit. Senator Bacik was very generous in her comments on my work on Joyce, but the generation before me and people such as Anthony Cronin and the late John Ryan have never received sufficient recognition for what they did. They were artists, whereas I was an impresario and performer to a certain extent. I saw the value in financial terms of the great writers. It was thanks to James Joyce, for example, that the work in North Great Georges Street was successful, because I was able to use Joyce's reputation to raise £2 million to save a building threatened with demolition. A major international Joyce symposium will take place in Ireland and I am delighted to say that UCD has now taken its rightful position on Joyce - it did not always welcome him - and now has a leading department where there will be exciting developments, but it is not up to me to reveal those developments. There has also been a supplement in The Irish Times on Joyce. Will the Leader contact the relevant Minister and ask what progress the copyright committee has made? The copyright issue is a concern for many writers, progress seems slow and it is urgent the matter is addressed.

We have not maximised the work of another writer, Bram Stoker, although he was not of the same intellectual calibre as Joyce. I take an interest in him because he was my great grandfather's cousin and his family are often in touch from various places. This year is the 100th anniversary of his death. Romania has successfully exploited this in an extraordinary way, but this country has made no money whatever out of it. We do not even have a statue commemorating him. We should do something in that regard. I am not saying that his work is Finnegan's Wake, but it is very unusual for a writer to create a global myth. Dracula is a global myth.

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