Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 199: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the withdrawal of funding to arts organisations funded by his Department (details supplied). [35001/09]

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)
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My Department fully appreciates the importance of arts and culture to children's education and personal development. The arts help to promote a child's self esteem and enjoyment of learning. They also provide an important vehicle for personal enrichment and cultural expression, as well as creating awareness and respect for other cultures. Working through the arts helps to nurture and develop cognitive, communicative, emotional, imaginative, aesthetic, social, and spiritual intelligences and skills. Learning through guided activity and discovery, with children as active agents in their own learning and enrichment, is a vital part of this process. This is why arts education, through Music, Visual Arts, and Drama, and of course, through language, forms an integral part of the primary curriculum.

Schools in DEIS are particularly aware of the importance of the arts in addressing disadvantage, and in promoting success in learning. Many schools in DEIS use the flexible budgets they receive to promote integrated links with community arts organisations and to offer enrichment programmes in support of the curriculum. The companies to which the Deputy refers are among a number of Theatre and Arts Groups that received funding from my Department over the last ten years to provide performances on relevant topics and drama/arts workshops in disadvantaged schools where the groups are located. This support was drawn from the Department's educational disadvantage budget which is primarily focused on assisting schools in their efforts to cater for the specific educational needs of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. With the introduction of the DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme in 2006, significant additional capitation funding was made and continues to be made available to the 876 schools in DEIS. DEIS is designed to ensure that schools serving the most disadvantaged communities benefit from the maximum level of support available.

There is a need to focus targeted resources on the schools in most need and this approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General which are set out in his report on Primary Disadvantage of 2006, which recommended that the Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged communities. In light of the current economic downturn the Department's focus is to retain mainstream resources on core interventions in schools. Support for the Theatre Groups is not consistent with this focus and such spending can not be regarded as a priority. While it is appreciated that the discontinuation of these resources will impact on the groups, given the extremely challenging economic circumstances, difficult decisions had to be made in order to contain public sector spending.

As the main focus of Social Inclusion measures is to retain resources in DEIS schools, these schools may at their discretion choose to use some of their additional disadvantaged capitation to avail of the services provided by the Theatre Groups.