Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Creative Europe is the EU programme supporting the culture and creative sectors. It is the Commission's primary support for the culture and audiovisual sectors, with a budget of €2.4 billion, approximately double the budget of the previous programme. It invests in actions that reinforce cultural diversity and respond to the needs and challenges of the culture and creative sectors. A brief look at Creative Europe funding from 2019 to 2021, inclusive, shows there were more than 3,000 awards for projects throughout the European Union. Importantly, Ireland is performing well in all those projects, featuring in more than 113 awards, with an Irish project being co-ordinator in 56 of those awards and a partner organisation in 57. Of all Creative Europe awards, 3.6% feature Irish organisations. As our population makes up approximately 1% of the EU total population, it follows that we are performing well.

That said, for many years I have been of the view that there is significant potential for us to be drawing down more money from Creative Europe if we look at ways to support organisations that wish to factor EU funding into their medium- and long-term plans. I know of an arts organisation that had a full-time staff member working on a Creative Europe application. Fair play to it. European funding helps to grow and internationalise our creative and cultural organisations. The likes of "Wolfwalkers" received Slate funding. European distributors help Irish films, including "The Breadwinner", to be seen right across Europe. The Galway Film Fleadh and the Cork International Film Festival have also received support. All present are familiar with Europa Cinemas, the film theatre network, which has received support from Creative Europe, including for the Pálás Cinema in Galway, the Irish Film Institute and the Lighthouse Cinema among many examples throughout the country. On the culture strand, one of the many examples was the Murals for Communities project, which is about mural art as a tool for community engagement and involves murals being co-created by local people and mural artists. That was a project run by Waterford City and County Council and the Waterford Walls project. Their co-partners were in Lithuania and the Netherlands. As an aside, I look forward to the Oireachtas joint committee examining the issue of public art, murals and restrictive planning laws at our upcoming meetings on local arts.

One of the principal obstacles facing Ireland's arts and cultural organisations is the research and development costs relating to Creative Europe funding, including the costs of the networking and travelling that are essential to the development of these projects. For many years, I and others have called for a research and development fund to support cultural organisations and give them a leg-up when applying for EU funding. The Arts Council has a co-funding award for organisations that have secured funding under Creative Europe but that only applies to artistic organisations rather than to the wider creative and cultural sector. We should aim to ensure that greater amounts of Creative Europe funding are channelled towards Ireland. There is significant potential in that regard. Such a fund would allow Irish-based companies, organisations and charities to devise and effectively prepare large-scale projects with European partners and increase our ability to access EU funding.