Culture Policy
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

For the Department of arts to wash its hands of a vibrant and vital artistic and cultural space, home to hundreds of artists, is crazy. Whatever about the finer points of demarcation between the OPW, the Department of Finance and local authorities, for the Department of arts to be indifferent or to say, "It is nothing to do with us" is not good enough. It needs to be banging heads together. A crisis meeting is happening this evening in The Complex for artists and people from the local community. A marathon gig is planned for 17, 18 and 19 December, with 45 bands and performers. The Complex has 15,000 signatures behind it. This is a huge hit for the local, artistic, musical and theatrical communities. All that is required is a commitment of €6 million over four years. That is buttons compared with the surpluses and the money that is available to the Government. We can save this vital space.
If we are serious about a commitment to arts and culture, this is a very small amount of money to save a lot of artists and to do something for the north inner city and that community.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11