Culture Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-03
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Patrick O'Donovan (FG), Limerick County

Deputy Butterly will be glad to hear that, over the last couple of weeks, I have been dealing with a town of culture initiative in the Department. We are at a preliminary stage of drawing up what it would look like and how we would award it. I envisage a competitive process through the local authorities, with local authorities putting forward nominees to be the town of culture for a fixed period of time. From that, supports would be able to be derived from the Department. I also envisage that the town of culture designation would not be for one year, but for multiple years, because of the size of the Department. The Deputy also made a very interesting point that in order to have legacy, the designation will be needed for more than one year. We are at a very early stage. As recently as this week, I asked for resources in the Department to be assigned to the design of a scheme. That will ultimately be a competitive process. I am sure every local authority in the country, including Louth County Council, will have great ideas as to how they imagine this would be best represented in their area.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03