Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was going to raise exactly the same issue but in a slightly different way. We see the plan to replace Merchant's Arch with a nine-bedroom hotel. We see the plan to replace the Cobblestone with a nine-bedroom hotel. We are looking at the city develop and essentially hollow-out all its cultural spaces to have a cookie-cutter version of culture one can find anywhere.

In addition to those commercial enterprises and ventures which are essentially being changed into cookie-cutter versions of hotels, we are also seeing a crisis in artistic spaces and studio spaces which has been going on since 2015. In 2015, myself and Councillor Claire Byrne of the Green Party worked on the Dublin City Development Plan to try to include cultural and artistic spaces in it, such that where there would be large-scale developments, there would be an element of studio and cultural space included in it. That came off the back of Broadstone artists' studios, which had been in operation for 20 years and paid to its landlord more than €1 million in rent during that time. Through that, what was happening was the Department with responsibility for arts and the Arts Council were essentially giving the studios programme funding to be able to pay that landlord its rent. Then the landlord decided to sell up and the organisation was kicked out. The studios were never re-established. We see this happening all over the city. We see it happening in my area of Dublin 8 at the moment. Pallas Projects/Studios works within the arts and has provided both exhibition and studio space within Dublin 8 at a number of different sites over the last number of years. Its lease is up in February. When that happened at Broadstone, myself and Councillor Byrne set up a studio arts space but what we wanted was for the Department to provide studio and workspace providers with capital funding so they could buy their own buildings and not be kicked out every couple of years.

As part of the budget next week, I would like to see a commitment to capital funding for arts and culture spaces, in Dublin in particular, but also around the country. It is bad policy and bad planning that when it comes to cultural capital we are essentially providing the housing assistance payment, HAP, rather than social housing. I ask the Government look at providing mortgages and long-term loans to artists' studios to be able to buy the premises they are in and to have a clause that ownership reverts to the local authorities if those organisations end up winding up. It is simply unacceptable that artists' studios and places for people to work are living short term to short term. We must be willing to support investment in our cultural capital and our artists by providing them with places to live and places to work.