Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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241. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the expenditure of the Creative Ireland programme to date; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43369/17]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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An enabling budget of €5m was allocated to implement the Creative Ireland Programme in 2017. This includes an ambitious plan to deliver ten high level initiatives by the end of 2017. Further details on the content of the Programme are available on .

To date, a sum of €3.4m has been spent implementing the Creative Ireland Programme. This includes €1m allocated to the local authorities to support their Culture and Creativity Plans for 2017, and €1.1m towards planning and rolling out Cruinniú na Cásca on Easter Monday. An additional sum of €0.3m has been spent on developing two websites to inform the public at home and abroad:andwww.Ireland.ieand associated digital content and social media platforms to support these websites. These have been promoted by an extensive public campaign to engage citizens in the Programme which to date has cost €0.25m.

The Creative Ireland Programme is not a funding body and as such does not administer any grant or funding schemes. However, the Programme is taking the opportunity in this, its initial year, to engage and collaborate with several key cultural partners at various important national events and festivals in order to promote the objectives and underlying values of this major new Programme, and encourage deeper understanding and appreciation of the role of the creative arts.  To date a sum of €0.25m has been spent on this element of the Programme.

The remaining sum of €0.5m has been expended on administrative and operational costs associated with the Creative Ireland Programme Project Office.