Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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60. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht her views on the fact that the investment criteria for the Irish Arts Center in New York has been dropped. [4175/17]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I was very pleased to be able to provide €1 million in capital funding from my Department for the development of the new Irish Arts Center in New York. The Irish Arts Center is one of two key partners which promote Irish arts abroad and which my Department supports on an ongoing basis through the Culture Ireland programme. The other is the Centre Culturel in Paris. In both cases my Department provides annual funding to showcase the best of Irish arts and culture in these two culturally rich world cities.

This capital funding will supplement private and US State support, including City of New York funding of $36.85m, State of New York funding of $3.65m and private funding of $7.6m. My Department’s grant in December complements over €3m provided to date by the Government through the Emigrant Support Programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as the support provided by the Office of Public Works in preparing the designs for the new Center. The new Irish Arts Center, when completed, will be a flagship venue which will offer a major platform for the coming generation of Irish artists and performers.

The Government’s additional support was warmly welcomed by the Irish community in New York when I visited there two weeks ago to launch the Culture Ireland US programme for 2017 where my Department will provide €1m to Irish artists to showcase their work in the United States throughout the year.

This builds on the increased funding which my Department was able to provide in 2016 to enable an enhanced programme to be presented as part of 'I Am Ireland', Culture Ireland's Centenary programme.

It is not clear to me what the Deputy is referring to in relation to the dropping of investment criteria, however, my Department has attached standard conditions to the grant to ensure that the investment is protected. 

The additional funding which I have now provided will assist in ensuring that this flagship artistic Irish cultural venue is delivered on schedule by allowing site preparations to progress as planned.