Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 76: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the EU culture programmes that are running at present; the location at which these projects are based and the categories; the numbers employed on these projects; the total amount of funding that has been secured from the EU for same; the projected amount of the €70 billion of funding that Ireland hopes to secure during the life of the programme; the reason there has been no information made available to interested community based groups regarding the creative economy programme. [11335/12]

Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will appreciate that, at present, there are two EU programmes operating within the areas for which I have responsibility:

1. The Media Programme is the EU support programme for the European audiovisual industry and details are available at www.mediadeskireland.ie; and

2. The Culture Programme is the EU support programme for organisations working in the field of culture and details are available at www.ccp.ie.

The websites in question give a significant level of detail on the operation of the two programmes.

I am not aware of a fund of €70 billion of the nature referred to by the Deputy, either at EU level or elsewhere. There are, however, discussions currently underway between the Member States and the European Commission on a new framework programme for the cultural and creative sectors, for which a budget of some €1,800 million is mooted. This would run from 2014 to 2020 and be called the Creative Europe Programme. This is far from finalised and it will have to be considered in the context of the overall EU Budget. It includes a proposal to amalgamate the current Culture and MEDIA programmes under a common framework and to create an entirely new facility to improve access to finance.