Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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70. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if an audit is in place for the awarding of funding by Creative Ireland; if so, the process by which the audit will be carried out; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [47852/17]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Creative Ireland Programme is not a funding body and does not administer any specific grant or funding schemes. Neither is it my intention that it will become such a funding body in the future.

An enabling budget of €5m was allocated to implement and promote the Creative Ireland Programme from within my Department in 2017.

To date, a sum of €4m has been expended in this regard. This includes €1m which I 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.

I allocated an additional sum of €0.5m on developing two websites to inform the public at home and abroad: and www.Ireland.ie - and associated digital content and social media platforms to support these websites. These have been supported by an extensive public media campaign to engage citizens in the Programme which to date has cost €0.6m.

In addition, the opportunity was taken 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 creativity. Among the considerations used to identity key cultural partners was a definitive creative element to their programme, their track record in delivering a programme and their capacity to attract and engage a significant audience. To date a sum of €250,000 has been spent on this element of the Programme.

The remaining sum of €550,000 has been expended on administrative and everyday operational costs associated with the Creative Ireland Programme Office in my Department.

All programmes administered by my Department are subject to Public Financial Procedures and are monitored and reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure value for money. Programmes can also be subject to periodic monitoring through the Department's internal and external audit processes.