Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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My Department’s arts and cultural programme aims to promote and develop Ireland’s rich culture at home and abroad, maximising their societal and economic value for the country, and supporting the Arts, Culture and Creative sectors to continue to develop and expand. The overall budget allocation for Arts and Culture in my Department's Vote for 2024 includes €369.3m, up from €357m in 2023. This increased funding for arts and culture includes:

• an additional €4m to the Arts Council, with record funding of €134m in 2024 empowering the Arts Council to build on recent successes in the sector;
• additional €1.5m to Screen Ireland supporting the audiovisual industry to build and expand capacity across the country;
• additional €1m to Culture Ireland to continue to expand its work to share our culture more broadly around the world.

In addition to this, key plans for strengthening arts and culture supports in 2024 include:

• in conjunction with Minister for Finance Michael McGrath, changes to Section 481 tax relief will further enhance Ireland’s attractiveness as a location for major international film and television projects, building on the remarkable success of “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “An Cailín Ciúin”. In particular the increase in the cap to €125 million will restore Ireland’s ability to attract high-value, internationally mobile audio-visual projects that will generate significant employment and skills development opportunities for Irish crew
• Basic Income for the Arts pilot programme is funded for the second of three years , with recently published research findings setting out the impact on the lives of participants to date
• increased funding for the Safe to Create Programme that supports all artists and creatives that will allow Minding Creative Minds to provide new dedicated HR, Mediation, Legal & Financial advice to the creative sector, creative therapies, dedicated mentoring & career services as well as an information campaign on its serious trauma counselling service
• further support for Creative Ireland, to implement projects under the expanded Creative Climate Action Fund will underpin the department’s commitment to building for a better future through supporting participation in creative cultural activity
• additional support for Comhaltas Ceoltóirí éireann
• our National Cultural Institutions and other approved bodies will benefit from an increase in the tax relief on donations further incentivises donation to strengthen our national collections. The cap on the relief under the scheme will increase from €6 million to €8 million next year
• other support for the National Cultural Institutions for programme, learning and outreach activities

Irish culture plays a very significant role in Ireland’s tourism offering and in that regard, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland will continue to promote cultural events and festivals through their various marketing campaigns in 2024.