Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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56. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the portion of the Creative Europe Fund Ireland has drawn down of the total drawn down fund throughout the EU; and the number of projects that are drawn down here in contrast to other EU states to date. [37404/16]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Creative Europe 2014-20 is the European funding programme for the audio-visual and culture sectors. There are Creative Europe Desks covering culture and media in Ireland, which provide information, advice and technical assistance to arts and heritage organisations in Ireland that are interested in applying to the Creative Europe Media and Culture Sub-programmes. The Creative Europe Culture Sub-programme has granted over €13 million to projects with Irish partners in its first three years. Over €2 million of this has been awarded to Irish-led projects. Recent statistics show that Ireland's participation is improving and organisations are now more likely to look to Europe for funding. Whilst the Culture Programme 2007-2013 saw 32 Irish organisations involved in successful projects, giving an average of 4 successes per year, in the three years of the Creative Europe 2014-20 programme the average has increased to 7 per year.

Ireland's percentage take from the Programme is broadly in line with our population size. A comparison with Denmark, a similar size country to Ireland, shows that Danish organisations have had success with 23 projects to date in the Creative Europe Culture Sub-programme, while Irish organisations have had success with 21 projects. Looking at overall success rates for the last round of Co-operation Projects (the strand through which approximately 80% of the Culture funds are dispersed), the total success rate across the EU was 12%. Ireland’s success rate was 13%.

In respect of the Creative Europe Media Sub-programme, since the Creative Europe Programme commenced in January 2014, the Irish audiovisual sector has received some €5.338 million in direct funding from the Media Sub-programme.  In the first 2 years, 1.7% of the total Creative Europe Media Sub-programme budget of some €216 million was allocated to Ireland.As Ireland represents less than 1% of the population of the EU and, given that non-EU countries also participate in the programme, Ireland has significantly outperformed on a population ratio by more than 50%.

A complete list of funding results is published on the Education, Audio-Visual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) website at .