Vol. 676 No. 4
46 Deputy James Reilly asked the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if he has put in place measures to track job losses in the arts sector due to the economic downturn; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8669/09]
57 Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism his priorities for the promotion and funding of the arts during the current economic climate with particular reference to the need to ensure the survival of the arts throughout this period; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8569/09]
291 Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism his proposals for the promotion and development of the arts at various local levels here with particular reference to projected needs in the current economic climate; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9037/09]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 46, 57 and 291 together.
The State appreciates and values the contribution the arts sector has made to the internationally renowned artistic reputation of this country. Even within the current economic constraints I do not consider investment in the arts, culture and creative sectors as somehow discretionary. As Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, I was pleased to secure overall funding of €185 million for the arts, culture and film sectors in this year's budget.
The Arts Council is the State agency charged primarily with the promotion and funding of the arts. I continue to monitor and review the resources at my disposal to facilitate the council in its vital work. To this purpose, funding for the arts and culture sectors has increased significantly in recent years. For example, funding to the Arts Council had increased by 72.2% since 2002, from €47.67 million to €81.6 million in 2008. Due to the serious budgetary constraints now confronting us the level of funding for the Arts Council had to be reduced for 2009 to €74.439 million, but with reductions to arts organisations being minimised as much as possible.
I am acutely aware of the employment potential which the arts and culture areas represent. According to 2007 Pocketbook on Cultural Statistics, EUROSTAT estimates that there were 48,000 employed in the cultural sector in Ireland in 2005 representing 2.5% of the total number employed in Ireland. This figure compares well with other EU member states and is marginally higher than the 2.4% EU average. Other EU studies estimate that the culture and creative sectors in Ireland contributed 1.7% to GDP in 2003.
The arts, culture and creative sectors are key elements of the cultural tourism agenda. As Deputy Mitchell recognised earlier, the sectors are real and enduring employers and the fulcrum of a smart economy.
I am optimistic regarding the spirit, ability, and willingness of those involved in the arts to adapt and mobilise in not only facing future challenges but in turning them into opportunities. In that regard the key findings of the recent Creative West report are worth reciting. The western region has 4,779 businesses in the creative sector employing 11,000 people, accounting for 3% of total regional employment, and generating €534 million in annual turnover. Creative sector businesses in the region are mainly indigenous, small scale and rooted in their western location with 98% headquartered in the region. Quality of life and inspiration are among the strongest motivators for creative people to live and work in the western region. Currently there is relatively little networking among creative businesses in the region and economic opportunities may be lost because of this. Greater linkages between the creative sector and other sectors can enhance innovation across the economy. There is potential for overseas market growth as currently only €74 million of total turnover is exported.
In the current economic conditions the arts and culture sectors will not be immune from the knock-on impact on revenues. I have asked the Arts Council to keep my Department informed on trends in this area.
We all recognise that money is tight and that there will be cutbacks. The purpose of these questions is to ensure that cutbacks will be made in a way that causes the least damage in terms of employment. I accept what the Minister said about the Western Development Commission's report. It is precisely because those jobs are dispersed throughout the country that is difficult to track what happens when cutbacks are made. Is there any possibility of tracking, through the CSO, the Arts Council or some mechanism within the industry, be it through theatre companies or the Irish Film Board, the impact of the economic downturn on the industry?
I am aware that the film industry is suffering in this respect. The Irish Film Board is commissioning less work, as is RTE, TV3 and TG4. Reports from within the film industry suggest there has been a loss of almost half of the jobs in the industry. That would be catastrophic because, as the Minister knows, it is an important sector and a big employer. It is one that can disappear from the country overnight as it is very mobile. That is the reason I am anxious to ascertain if there is any way of checking the impact of economic downturn on the industry and if, for example, the Irish Film Board should commission several smaller films rather than one big one, given that our tax system is not very conducive to the funding of big movies.
The Deputy raised a number of points. I agree with her that the industry is dispersed throughout the country. It percolates down into small communities and villages and the people involved in it get good employment. The industry plays an important role in the heart and spirit of many communities. Unlike many other businesses, it has the capacity to get into areas.
Through the Arts Council, we are trying to monitor the effect of the economic downturn. We have tried to maximise the allocation of resources to maintain jobs in all the activities that occur in the arts sector.
I am surprised at the information the Deputy has received about the film industry. I have not had any such indication. There was a significant Irish presence at the Oscar Academy Awards in Los Angeles last week and a significant Irish event was held leading up to the ceremony. It was an event I was supposed to attend, but in the current circumstances I thought if I was seen near the Oscar Academy Awards it would be misunderstood.
Approximately €150 million worth of business was on the table, which is a substantial increase on the figure for last year. We made changes to section 481 of the legislation in the budget on the basis of advice received from the Irish Film Board and others in the industry. The move to provide 100% tax relief for investment and to increase from €31,750 to €50,000 the limit for such investment, has had a significant impact. Everyone everywhere is feeling the pinch and we have to monitor how many of these projects will materialise. Last year the Irish Film Board funded approximately 25 feature films. I gave this figure the other day, and I can be corrected on it if I am wrong, but it was a significant number, which generated approximately €75 million in terms of activity in the country. Therefore, that was the right approach. The Irish Film Board funded a large number of small films.
I would not want the film board to put all its resources into funding one large film. It has a role and recognises it to be that of investment in generating jobs for young artists and creating opportunities for new directors, producers and actors to get involved in the film industry. The sector has had a very successful year. Gabriel Byrne and Colin Farrell won Golden Globes. The Costa Book of the Year Award was won by an Irish author. Success was enjoyed across the spectrum in that the Irish short film, "New Boy", which was fully funded by the Irish Film Board, won a Global Globe — it did not win an Oscar.
People tend to talk about this industry as a nice added extra, but given the current digital era, the creative talent we have, in terms of those who work in these major international digital companies, is fermenting in the film industry. Some 1,000 people were employed in the industry five or six years ago while more than 6,000 of the best of people are employed in it now. In terms of the quality of people working in the Irish film sector, it is seen as one of the best in the world. We were being passed out by other countries, as Deputy Mitchell corrected pointed out, in terms of the incentives they give to get films produced. We have now corrected that imbalance. That was reflected in what happened last week in Los Angeles. I am optimistic that the business this year will be as good and hopefully better than in previous years.
I agree with everything the Minister said in both parts of his reply, which is basically all about the importance of the arts. I fully subscribe to that and agree with the Minister. My concern is that there will be job losses in the industry, which the Minister has acknowledged. It is almost inevitable. There is no reason this, no more than any other industry, should be insulated from that.
I wish to raise two points. We have a tracking mechanism for many of the industries such as the construction industry, the catering industry and so on. Could we not find a way to establish exactly what jobs in the industry have been lost or are likely to be lost? My other point is that two or three jobs will be lost here and there, the immediate effect of which may not be noticeable, but for the individuals concerned it will be just as damaging and as important as if 100 jobs were lost in another area.
Those with arts related jobs must keep up to speed. The Minister mentioned the development in the digital area, which is rapidly advancing. If people in this industry lose their jobs, will the Minister discuss with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment ways to refocus or redirect those people into jobs to enable them to keep their skills up to date and to be effectively employed in a valuable way, for example, in schools or in communities? There are various ways in which they could be employed.
I hope we took the right decision and the early indications are that we did. Rather than people losing their jobs, I expect all the jobs in the film sector will be sustained this year in Ireland because it was indicated in Los Angeles last week that there is €150 million worth of potential projects in the pipeline.
I was not referring to only the film industry but the wider sector.
I am aware of that but I am referring directly to the people involved in the specific high end of the digital sector, the television film sector. That indication is very positive. I hope that is the outcome at the end of the year.
There is an informal tracking of jobs through the Arts Council and I can examine whether we can put it on a formal tracking basis through the CSO or some other mechanism. It is probably more difficult to do that because it is diffuse in the sense of its dispersement, not in the sense of its importance.
I am very conscious of that and I have tried hard to address it with support from the Deputies. It is very important when we talk about the arts sector to continually make the point that it is not some added extra in good times. It is very much at the heart of economic activity of this country and very much at the heart of the broadest creative sector including in technology — in companies like Intel. Many of the creative people that are developing come out of this area or are formed in this type of situation and I think we need to try and do that. I accept that there will be some pain to be borne. There is no point in denying it. However, I believe we have done as much as we can to protect the primacy and importance of the jobs in the sector. I recognise that the sector makes an enormous contribution to tourism and the hard economy rather than simply cultural tourism and in addition brings international respect for Ireland.
I agree with the Minister. The importance of the arts goes beyond the importance of the jobs — important as they are. The only good news stories coming out of Ireland in the past six months have been from the arts, including the Oscar awards and the achievements of our writers, which is of great value to Ireland.
While it is great that we now have so many regional arts venues, as the Minister knows I have expressed concern in the past about them always being on the breadline and on the cusp of being unviable. With the reduction in touring, some of them will be in very dire financial straits. The safety net of local authority funding will probably disappear, as their income will be greatly reduced. Is there any way to track the viability of those venues over the next 12 months or so in order to ascertain the impact of the shortage of touring etc. and the reduction in their annual grants, including their maintenance grants, which is a major factor? Without a reasonable maintenance grant, some of those centres will need to close even from a health and safety point of view, which would undermine the point of having built them in the first place.
The present economic circumstances will impact on some of the points the Deputy is making and it would be foolish to think otherwise. I am conscious of that and I am trying to track through the local authorities, the Arts Council and other bodies what exactly is happening to ascertain the impact. I am also getting the message back that people can be smarter, more efficient and more productive with less — and they are saying that. The scale of the increase in the arts funding in recent years was phenomenal — and rightly so. There has been a 72% increase in arts funding in the past four or five years. The level of funding has hardly gone back in terms of the past year or two. It is a question of trying to get more value, squeeze more out of it with people doing less. There may be some jobs lost here and there. I suppose that is inevitable to some degree. People will also make some career choice moves. At this stage what is recognised is that we are happy that we did not get mauled. We have taken our share. We do not want to take any more pain. We want to get on now with what we are doing and want to plan on that basis. Perhaps when we return for parliamentary questions in the House in couple of months time I may have more information for the Deputies on that specific point.
47 Deputy Olwyn Enright asked the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the progress made on the culture and tourism initiative; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8623/09]
On 11 February I met the heads of 15 State tourism agencies, State arts bodies, and the cultural institutions to begin the work of further developing the cultural tourism market. This is the first step in implementing my undertaking to put in place an initiative to further develop the potential of cultural tourism.
This initiative will build, in the first instance, on co-operation and synergy between the bodies and institutions under the aegis of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. I wish to set in train a programme of specific actions that will enable Ireland to more effectively address the needs of overseas and domestic tourists who wish to experience Ireland's cultural and artistic resources.
At the meeting of 11 February, I asked the relevant agencies to take a number of specific measures that will enhance the availability of information on cultural attractions and events, both in marketing material and also the on-site provision of information. I have also established a network through which State agencies and institutions in the arts, culture and tourism spheres will interact with each other to identify and capitalise on opportunities to further develop Ireland as a destination for cultural tourism. A small steering group, drawn from a representative group of the heads of agencies and officials from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, has been established to identify specific actions to be undertaken in order to increase Ireland's attractiveness as a destination for cultural tourism.
The Government is committed to the development of niche cultural tourism markets, as outlined in the recently published Building Ireland's Smart Economy document. Cultural tourism is growing in importance internationally. It has been achieving average annual growth rates of 15% — three times the overall growth rate for tourism. It represents a third of all tourism business and is high yield. It is essential that Ireland positions itself as a premier destination for the many tourists for whom experiencing culture is an important component of their holiday. I am confident that the measures being taken will strengthen the arts and culture family and help the Irish tourism industry to address the current challenges and boost business in future years.
I welcome that the Minister is having those meetings because I believe a large part of the future of tourism lies in the cultural area as all the research indicates. I was surprised that so many bodies were involved which makes me wonder whether this area is so fragmented that it is inefficient. In addition I was surprised at the omission of others who would have had a big input into that, for example tour operators, who are out selling Ireland on their own behalf and obviously are bringing visitors home. The other big player missing — maybe the newspapers failed to report it — was the OPW, which is responsible for the construction and maintenance of our heritage sites and attractions.
And operating them.
I have previously raised the role of the OPW with the Minister. It must recognise that we are all in this together and that these facilities must be made available. One of my colleagues recently went to visit Kilmainham with a bus load of people and was told — owing to the cutbacks I presume — that they would need to wait an hour and a half for a tour with the result that 40 people got back on a bus. The entrance fee was lost and whatever else they were selling was lost, and a bad impression was gained. There is no sense in investing in these facilities and then not letting people in to see them and making the most of every opportunity to get money out of them.
I agree with the Deputy and I would be very regretful about such incidents. I have no reason to disbelieve her that that was the experience of those people. I do not know why it happened. I do not know whether it was a one-off incident for some specific reason. However, I take the point. If we are to be serious these things need to be in place for seven days a week in a seamless way. They need to be open on public holidays, which is when people want to be there. The Deputy is right in identifying this as a big part of our tourism product. More than €3 million of our €8 million went specifically towards cultural tourism. Some 60% came from abroad, which is the right mix. There are more coming in and that will probably even increase. Some 40% came from the island of Ireland.
I have spoken at length on the issue of opening times. Private sector businesses would be open because they are trying to make money to survive and pay their staff. They want to provide a good product. That is recognised. There was very substantial improvement in recent times on the way things were run up to a few years ago which was almost on a five-day week closing at 5 o'clock basis, which was utterly unacceptable. We now need to get to the next level and be fully open at the times people expect, as we expect when we go abroad. We expect to be able to walk into a museum or cultural institution and would be surprised if it was closed. The same applies to people coming here.
As a former Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, the Minister has first hand experience. What is the possibility of having many of these facilities opened throughout the year and not just on a seasonal basis? Tourism does not start on 17 March and finish in September or October. It is critical to have all the available facilities open throughout the year, not only for visitors coming from abroad but also to help develop our own sector.
On the heritage side of things, much work has been done by the OPW under various Governments throughout the years in developing facilities like Kilmainham, Newgrange and so forth. There are many others, including in my part of the country, the historic capital of Connacht, that have not been utilised and developed to their full potential. What is the feasibility of these? While I understand the difficult financial circumstances, if we are going to develop new products, there is huge potential in regard to heritage sites that have not been fully developed and made available to the public.
It is not specifically the Minister's responsibility but I am sure it overlaps.
It is right that the aim should be that every facility should be open 12 months of the year. We would all accept there may be some smaller facilities where it would not be realistic to achieve that, but the aim should be to achieve it. A substantial number of projects, large and small, have been identified throughout the country to enhance the product. A number of those are in State ownership, which would make them the direct responsibility of the Office of Public Works. To be fair to the OPW, it has not been slow about working up the plans.
I will not deny there is a current difficulty with the budgetary position with regard to implementing some of those proposals but, nevertheless, my attitude is that we would keep pushing ahead. If we need to go to planning, or whatever we need to do, let us keep doing what we are doing and prime pump everything. Some money will be spent so it is not a case of none being spent. Even from the tourism side, the product development fund is still there, and while it is not as big as we might like it to be, it is helping projects to develop.
The Deputy is correct that because we market Ireland with an island-of-Ireland approach, we need to have that necklace of regional activity so that people who come into Northern Ireland can also visit the mid-west, and those who come into the south-east can also visit the North and see the attractions of the whole island.
Deputy Olivia Mitchell rightly raised the point that there are a number of good bodies which operate under broad umbrellas, such as the Town and Country Homes Association, the Irish Georgian Society and specialist mansions. While they are all well-meaning and do good work, none of them on their own can market internationally in the way they should. There should be an overall branding so we can put all the resources into one marketing campaign, and these bodies can exist underneath the surface. It is not feasible and it is poor organisation to maximise the cost of trying to bring a global image worldwide by marketing all of those bodies. It is possible to do this, not by spending more money but simply by using what is in all the little pots and putting it together. The sum of all the parts will create much more than having these bodies operate individually. In particularly tight times, every penny must be maximised. This is how some of that will be done and more of it can be done.
While the OPW is not the Minister's direct responsibility, tourism is. I understand the OPW gets a budget to run its facility, pay guides and so on but it does not retain whatever income it takes in at the door so there is no incentive for the sites to either stay open even for the month of April, never mind a full year, or to open late. Will the Minister have discussions with the Minister of Finance to ensure the money the OPW takes in stays there in order to pay the guides and keep the sites open and available to visitors when they want to see the facilities?
I am sure it would be the Deputy's experience, and it certainly would be mine, that the people one meets at the sites are very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about what they are doing.
Not enough people are meeting them.
If the Deputy is suggesting there should be a further ownership incentive in terms of reward for the activities they undertake, I would not disagree with her. That is why, to some degree, there might be better structures working in the private sector. I do not know the possibilities of this. I can mention it to my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Martin Mansergh, who has responsibility for the Office of Public Works.
The Deputy is correct in the fundamental point that close co-operation is vital to maximise all the activity. As she said almost in exasperation at the beginning, and I can empathise with her, there are so many bodies we wonder at times are we doing the right thing. It is clear there is much enthusiasm but we could maximise the benefit much more than we are doing.
The value to Ireland of the awards that are being won internationally, be it by actors, museums or otherwise, is incredible. We could not buy the coverage this gives to the country in terms of promoting Ireland as a first-class tourism destination. Our cultural institutions contain people who operate in the broad cultural areas, such as drama, the visual arts and so on, and they are invaluable in delivering tourists into this country. We must recognise and sustain that.
Written Answers follow Adjournment Debate.
