Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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304. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the criteria used by her for the selection of festivals that were granted State funding under the Creative Ireland budget. [49265/17]

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. An enabling budget of €5 m was allocated to implement and promote the Creative Ireland Programme from within the Department in 2017 and to date, a sum of €4m has been expended in this regard.

The opportunity was taken in this initial year of the Programme to engage and collaborate with several key cultural partners at various significant national events and arts festivals in order to promote the objectives and underlying values of this new Programme, and encourage deeper understanding and appreciation of the role of creativity.

Among the considerations used to select key cultural partners was their high-level profile, their prominence as part of the cultural calendar, a definitive creative element to their programme, their track record in delivering an event 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 overarching aim of this collaborative approach was to promote the Programme as a new major initiative among key groups in the artistic, cultural and creative spheres.