Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the report by Helen Boaden on RTÉ's symphony and concert orchestras entitled Ensuring a Sustainable Future. However, I do not think that is really the problem. In looking through the report, RTÉ talks about how funding the orchestras presents a challenge to its financial circumstances and the fact that, as the national broadcaster, it is legally required to maintain them. It also refers to how the orchestras have been underresourced for years and how RTÉ could not continue to fund them because of shifting consumer behaviours and preferences, and a decrease in the staffing for both orchestras and in the number of musicians. RTÉ recommends that the national symphony orchestra would remain a national cultural institution.

There are two examples of possibly the greatest orchestras in the world, one is Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which has Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian players. It is a cultural icon above politics that travels the world. The second is El Sistema from Venezuela, which has created youth orchestras all over the world and its players have gone on to be great musicians and great conductors all over the world. My point is that we cannot argue that we do not have the money for our National Symphony Orchestra or our second orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, or that we only have €20 million for this and €10 million for that and €30 million for something else. We have to decide that they are an extraordinary part of our culture-----