The extent of the council's in-built inertia regarding music can be gauged from its failure to engage with one of the most exciting music venue developments of recent decades, the opening of the University Concert Hall in Limerick. This is all the more lamentable given that the council's plans identified Limerick as a centre of excellence for music.

However, such negligence can hardly be regarded as surprising from a body which steadfastly refuses to fund concert promotion in Dublin and appears to have done absolutely nothing to encourage the development of an acoustically viable permanent venue for smaller-scale concerts in the capital.

Just as Dublin needs the Gate as well as the Abbey, it needs an active competitive alternative to the youth and celebrity-dominated in-house promotional activities of the NCH. And while there have been some encouraging, if limited, moves in the recording of contemporary music, there is no sign that the council sees the development of native classical labels as having anything like the long-term significance or impact of nurturing publishers of the printed word.