Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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521. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the procedure, mechanisms and supports the State or State agencies provide to cities or local areas bidding for and hosting the European Capital of Culture in cases in which the host city is assigned to Ireland. [31101/21]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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The European Capitals of Culture programme is a European Union Action which sets out the right of all EU Member States, and recent EU candidate and potential candidate countries, to designate a city in their country to hold the title. Ireland held the designation in 2020 and will not be due to be designated again until post 2033.

It is the role of the State to facilitate the successful completion of the selection process. For example in the case of the 2020 designation, my Department completed this role by firstly launching the process six years in advance of the title year with an open call to local authorities seeking proposals from cities interested in being awarded the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) title. It then supported the independent panel of experts, appointed by the European Union Institutions, who assessed the applications, acting as liaison point between the panel and candidate cities and organising logistics for panel visits to the cities concerned. The applications for designation are generally local authority led and supported by local authority funding.

Based on the recommendation of the independent expert panel, it is then the function of the State to designate the city to hold the title of European Capital of Culture.

It is common practice for the State to provide financial support to the designated city. In this regard, the Government committed €15 million to Ireland’s designated 2020 European Capital of Culture under the terms and conditions of a Performance Delivery Agreement between my Department and Galway 2020.

Ireland’s European Capitals of Culture have all received support from the local authorities concerned – Dublin 1991, Cork 2005 and Galway 2020.