Sir, – At the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing on May 29th, Deputy Joanna Byrne of Sinn Féin made the observation that Arts Grant Funding (AGF) seems to disproportionately favour Dublin-based companies over regional arts initiatives.
The Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly’s response was to point to increased funding to arts centres throughout the State and the impressive number of touring weeks that companies like Irish National Opera (INO) undertake throughout the year.
If I may say so, this is far from the full picture.
Funding the running of arts centres is one thing but you only have to look at their programmes to see that there is a preponderance of commercial and community/amateur arts events over professional funded arts programming.
Good books: The 20 best holiday reads this summer
Jennifer O'Connell: The story of Sunny Jacobs was never as straightforward as the media suggested
Ukrainian commander’s final dispatch: ‘I had hoped my service and sacrifices would be enough, but they haven’t’
Changing surnames after marriage: ‘If it’s good enough for Amal Clooney, it’s good enough for me’
So the availability of regionally grown professional arts events and productions is key to addressing this programming imbalance. Parachuting in touring theatre and opera from Dublin, while occasionally welcome, contributes very little to the ecology of the regional arts.
As a client of the Arts Council going back 40 years or more and encompassing my time as artistic director of Opera Theatre Company (a forerunner to INO) and artistic director of the Abbey, both Dublin-based companies, and latterly as a former director of the Theatre Royal, Waterford, it has long been my contention that properly resourcing regional professional arts initiatives and companies is an important way of ensuring the fair spatial distribution of arts funding.
My views on this are well known at the Arts Council. Most recently I wrote to the director and chair with support from 20 of my colleagues to reiterate this point.
Properly resourcing regional arts will allow professional artists to work and live – if only for part of the time – in the place of their choosing rather than necessarily gravitating to places of higher population for all of their work.
As we know there is a broader societal trend of people moving away from large urban centres for a less expensive and better quality of life.
By way of example, Four Rivers, a Wexford-based initiative, was funded by the Arts Council from 2021-2024 to prioritise working with southeast based artists, or artists with connections to the region.
We foregrounded new and established work and engaged in partnerships – primarily with Wexford Arts Centre and the National Opera House – to provide professional theatre in the southeast.
Our grant-in-aid was modest but welcome and by 2024 allowed us to produce three good quality productions annually. That year we increased our audiences to in excess of 90 per cent of capacity – the figures are available and audited – and yet the outcome of our Arts Council funding application for 2025 – with the same mix of work and priorities that were successfully funded from 2021-2024 – inexplicably went from €205,000 to zero.
When we requested an explanation we were told that the award was “very competitive” and other applications were “more compelling”. Which really told us nothing. The momentum we had thus built up was, and is, in danger of being squandered.
In developing a new strategy to replace Great Art Works, the Arts Council needs to be mindful of the development and sustaining of regional professional arts companies in theatre and other disciplines that are embedded in their communities and not only provide employment to artists but help provide the kind of programming to arts centres that is currently largely unavailable to them. – Yours, etc,
BEN BARNES,
New Ross,
Co Wexford.
Panda’s eyes
Sir, – I’ve just received an email from Panda (my “chosen home recycling partner”) informing me that from June 12th the company’s collection trucks “will photograph and identify misplaced items within your bins”.
Presumably, all its customers have received similar notification.
As a result of this initiative, can we expect to see a marked increase in the sale of heavy-duty, black refuse sacks – the type that a standard camera cannot see through? – Yours, etc,
PAUL DELANEY,
Dalkey.
Investing in education
Sir, – David McWilliams (“Ireland is making progress, one mortar board at a time,” Weekend, May 31st) writes that “Education is the best way out of poverty. Education today is an investment in tomorrow”. I fully concur.
Access to educational resources on computers improves the quality of education delivered and outcomes for students. This access is often not affordable for young people living below the poverty line.
However, in Ireland, hundreds of thousands of computers are replaced every year but only a small percentage are assessed for reuse as a resource to enhance young people’s education and their life prospects.
They are instead recycled when, alternatively, if assessed for reuse they could have a valuable social impact in improving young people’s education.
It is time for the Government to urge commercial and public sector organisations to consider the reusability of retired IT assets as an education resource instead of merely choosing the less environmentally friendly option of recycling. – Yours, etc,
MARK FOX,
Dublin 18.
Striking a czar note
Sir, – One of the more amusing aspects of current debates is the proliferation of the term “czar”, a rather curious moniker in this day and age. There are suggestions that Dublin could do with a “night czar” while plans are afoot to entrust Ireland’s accommodation problem to a “housing czar”, no less.
Perhaps anybody seriously considering applying for the thankless task of tackling and solving the housing issue would do well to reflect on the fate which through the ages has befallen people who have borne the title of “czar” in its myriad linguistic variations.
Julius Caesar came to a sticky end in Rome, Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate and flee into a very comfortable exile, while his first World War ally, Kaiser Karl I of Austria-Hungary, was banished to a considerably less comfortable sojourn far from home.
Their joint foe on the Eastern Front, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, was assassinated, together with all his family and servants, in a cellar in the Urals and, during a later conflict, Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria may have died further to an Adolf Hitler-inspired plot using a sophisticated method of poisoning.
Touch wood that, if and when a lady or gentleman is duly appointed to do battle with the housing dragon, the title bestowed shall be neither “Tsarina” nor “Tsar” but the rather more utilitarian, if slightly less exotic, “Director or Head of Housing”.
And, when the time comes, the good wishes of all shall be with anybody brave enough to get into the saddle and ride off into battle. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN O’SULLIVAN,
Paris,
France.
Sir. – I have to agree with Graham Doyle, secretary general at the Department of Housing, a housing tsar is not required.
What would be more appropriate is a High King of Housing in Ireland who could rule rather than reign over a new house building kingdom. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT O’ROURKE,
Lucan,
Dublin.
Ireland and Israeli bonds
Sir, – Notwithstanding the Irish Government’s recent defeat of a Private Members’ Bill attempting to block the trade in Israeli bonds facilitated through the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), that institution has been remiss when reviewing the previous Israeli prospectus and must now insist that any future prospectus be truly comprehensive.
Since 2021, the CBI has approved four prospectuses to enable Israel to issue bonds within the EU.
Gabriel Makhlouf, governor of CBI, has previously defended the approval of Israel’s prospectus documentation stating that, as a competent authority of the EU Central Bank, the CBI must approve any prospectus for a bond issue that is clear, comprehensible, comprehensive and fulfils all necessary criteria as laid down in the annexes contained in legislation.
However, the last prospectus provided by Israel was far from comprehensive in several of the sections that are key to the approval.
For a bond prospectus to be approved, the issuer must provide a comprehensive list of risks that may impact investors’ return on the bonds. Up to 2024, Israeli prospectuses have laid out various security, economic, wartime and political risks that might impact the state’s ability (or desire) to repay investment in the bonds.
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and issued six provisional measures, ordering Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocidal acts, including preventing and punishing incitement to genocide, ensuring aid and services reach Palestinians under siege in Gaza, and preserving evidence of crimes committed in Gaza.
This interim statement from the ICJ issued a caution to the state of Israel that the court shall continue to evaluate the case against Israel and subsequently deliver its final decision.
However, section 2 (Risks) of Israel’s prospectus, approved by CBI in September 2024, made no mention of the risk of an adverse finding by the ICJ against Israel or the possibility of international sanctions against Israel based on evidence of the IDF’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank.
For this reason, it could not be considered to contain a “comprehensive” list of risks. In addition, section 8 “Use of Proceeds” contains only the following sentence: “The net proceeds from the issue of the Bonds are intended to be used for the general financing purposes of the Issuer.”
This bland formula was accepted by the CBI despite the sections entitled “Description of the Issuer” and “Recent Events” being full of references to Israel’s “war” efforts.
The Israeli government may not wish to acknowledge that it is “in the dock” before the ICJ, that the ICJ may find it guilty of committing genocide and that countries may consequently impose sanctions against Israel.
Regardless of the ICJ’s final decision, which may take years to arrive, any sovereign country or their private citizens may decide to boycott Israeli goods and services.
That such risks may be embarrassing to Israel and may draw attention to its increasing isolation in international relations should be of no concern to the Central Bank of Ireland. These factors represent additional risks to investors in the bonds and should be present in any comprehensive prospectus relating to the bond issue.
Israel’s bond issue expires at the end of August and must be renewed in September.
As a competent authority of the EU, the Central Bank of Ireland must insist that the prospectus be comprehensive, whether or not the bond issuer loses face through that completeness.
It behoves Mr Makhlouf to ensure the CBI fulfils its responsibilities to the full. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOHN HURLEY,
Social Democrat,
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – I’m hoping the Taoiseach and Tánaiste will have read Mark O’Connell’s excellent piece in Saturday’s paper (“I walked through the fire all by myself’” – this is barbarism”, Opinion, May 31st). The rawness of the piece and how it exposes the complicit impotence of western governments to what is happening in Gaza is powerful.
It holds in contrast the EU’s rapid reaction to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to its paralysis at the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
If our leaders really cared about international law and the future of a viable Palestinian state, they would be working day and night to enact the Occupied Territories Bill before the summer recess, and pushing others in the EU to do the same. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Blackrock,
Cork.
Biodiversity and housing
Sir, – Paul O’Shea’s excellent letter (Letters, May 31st) argues that as well as the issue of house-building, climate change still needs to be urgently addressed, such as by improving rural land use.
Although new urban and suburban house planning and building address climate change in some ways, there is siloed thinking that excludes serious attention to how biodiversity could be improved while providing housing.
Even a prescription for one fruit tree or bee-friendly plant per housing unit would help instead of acres of gravel and occasional token vegetation. – Yours, etc,
TRICIA CUSACK,
Co Wicklow.
Disappearing mackerel
Sir, – Katie Mellett reported on the collapse of whale-watching off the Cork coast (“It’s an empty, lifeless sea: Whales leave Cork waters, putting watchers out of business,” May 29th). Colm Barnes, an experienced fisherman, explained to her that almost all the whales have disappeared because their food source, sprat, are being fished out by huge fishing vessels.
We have been fishing for mackerel for 40 years on Kenmare Bay, a Special Area of Conservation. The mackerel have disappeared for the same reason. They feed on sprat, as you can see when you gut them.
In recent years in winter, huge fishing vessels sweep the bay in pairs, with massive fine mesh nets held between them. It is obvious that they are contributing to destroying the mackerel fishery in the bay, affecting small-scale fishing which is important to locals and visitors, doing untold damage there and beyond in the open sea.
One other consequence has been the virtual disappearance of the magnificent gannets from the upper bay and it’s likely that other diving birds have been affected.
The well publicised and ongoing destruction of this special area has been tolerated for some years by the authorities, ignoring their stated commitment to conservation.
For example, it has been highlighted by the UCC Green Campus Group and by the brilliant transition year students from Pobalscoil Inbhear Scéine, Kenmare, who have produced an informative and evocative video.
We are delighted to learn that Minister of State for Fisheries and the Marine Michael Healy-Rae is taking up this matter. We hope he will listen especially carefully to the young people of Ireland who are telling us to ban industrial fishing from Irish inshore waters now. – Yours, etc,
DAVID and JANET MCCONNELL,
CATHERINE FAYEN,
DAVE and CHERRIE LOWE,
DAVID O’SULLIVAN,
BRYAN MAYBURY,
FIONA THORNTON,
Co Kerry.
Name change
Sir, – My original surname was three letters long. I wished I’d had a longer one.
On marriage, almost 50 years ago, my wish was granted.
The difference is unbelievable! – Yours, etc,
RUTH GILL,
Birr,
Co Offaly.
Going grey
Sir, – Is a grey squirrel not an old red squirrel? (Squirrel spotting, Letters, June 2nd). – Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Dublin.
