Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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282. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the extent to which she expects to be in a position to enhance the promotion and development of an awareness of the arts and culture with a view to maximising economic benefit in the future; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27356/18]

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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The Arts Council, the main Irish Government agency for developing the arts, works in partnership with and provides funding for arts, artists, arts organisations, public policy makers and others to build a central place for the arts in Irish life. Festivals, and cultural events are important in this context and the Arts Council received €68m in funding from my Department in 2018.

In addition to the work of the Arts Council, the Creative Ireland Programme is a high level, high ambition, 5-year initiative, from 2017 to 2022 which aims to place creativity at the centre of public policy. The programme is being led by my Department in partnership with other Government Departments and Agencies, local authorities, the third level sector, arts and culture organisations (including the National Cultural Institutions) and relevant NGOs.

As part of the Creative Ireland Programme, each of the 31 local authorities has established a Culture Team and in 2017 published and implemented local Culture and Creativity Plans which were supported by an allocation of €2m (€1m from my Department and €1m from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government). In total, these plans listed over 750 local cultural projects, events and initiatives taking place nationwide last year which gave us a snapshot of the rich cultural activity taking place in each country.

Each local authority is now in the process of drawing up more detailed five-year Strategic Creativity Plans which will be published later this year. These strategies will be accompanied by an Activity Plan outlining initiatives being supported by the local authorities in their respective areas. The implementation of these Activity plans will be supported by a sum of €3m (€2m from my own Department and €1m from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government). Each local authority will therefore receive approximately €96,000 this year under the Creative Ireland Programme.

The overall aim of these plans will be to mainstream and promote culture and creativity in the life of the nation so that individually and collectively, we can realise our full creative potential with commensurate economic benefits.

We will continue to work across Government in 2018, to further enhance Ireland's cultural and artistic reputation, particularly in the context of the recently launched ten-year plan "Investing in our Culture, Language and Heritage 2018-2027" which sets out the Government’s objectives for capital investment in Ireland’s culture, language and heritage.

This level of investment will transform our cultural and heritage infrastructure right across the country and will support the development of employment opportunities across these sectors.

Details of the funding being made available under this programme and the text of the plan itself are available on my Department's website at .