Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome.I want to echo her comments about what has been a great day for the film industry here in Ireland when we see the nominations. I see that Paul Mescal has been nominated for a best actor award. One of his first films, “Drifting”, was filmed by two young lads from Granard in County Longford, Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney from Harp Media. Their film, “Lakelands”, which was filmed at home in north Longford, won an award at the Galway film festival and it is featuring at the Santa Barbara film festival in the first week of February. It is based around the GAA back home in north Longford but it has gone international. It is important to put on the record the support from the various arts offices, but critically from Screen Ireland, to a lot of these productions. It is the investment that has been put in by the Government that is seeing days like this and success like this, which needs to be acknowledged.

The Bill makes sense. Some of us in this Chamber can be a bit critical of RTÉ but it makes sense that RTÉ concentrates on television and radio, and that things like the orchestra and the choir would be transferred to the National Concert Hall, where the vast majority of the performances are and where the expertise is based. It is only from now on that we will be able to see both the choir and the orchestra enhanced and expanded. That is important and it is a very sensible move to make.

It also ties in with the announcement that was made before Christmas by the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Government to support what is a hugely ambitious project to make the National Concert Hall one of the world’s great centres for music, culture and arts. It ties in with the proposals for the national theatre. A number of the committee members met with the directors in the Abbey Theatre prior to Christmas to discuss plans there and the commitments from the Government to turn that into a national theatre that we can be proud of on an international scale. The plans that are in place to face that onto the River Liffey will set out Dublin as our capital. When both the theatre and the concert hall are finished, they will stand out worldwide. It is important that we put in that investment. It is ambitious but we are an ambitious Government and we have an ambitious Minister in place. We have the right Minister in the portfolio who is prepared to drive on these projects.

As I said, it is a flagship project for the country to develop the concert hall. It is part of our national development plan so the commitment is there from the Government to enhance the arts in this country, which is important. It is a sensible decision that we are making today to move it over to the National Concert Hall on what is one of the great days for Irish arts, when we see such a significant number of our films nominated for Oscar awards. I commend the Bill.