McManus Concerned Over Funding for County Wicklow Arts Centre

"While I warmly welcome the £1.4m allocation recently announced by Minister Sile De Valera, the harsh truth is that this allocation is nowhere near enough to meet the requirements of a modern Arts Centre. "The Government was asked to allocate £3.1m but only allocated less

Deputy Liz McManus

than half that amount at £1.4m. This is a double blow because another commitment of private sponsorship of £1.5m has already been put in jeopardy by a recent decision by An Bord Pleanala against Cosgrave Developers.

"The total cost of the Arts Centre now exceeds £5 million. This in large part is due to an escalation in costs arising from requirements by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands which added a major cost to the project. It is worth noting that Minister De Valera has been able to allocate £4.5m to a similar scale of project in her own constituency of County Clare. Here in Bray we continue to lose out badly as a consequence of gross under-funding for the arts in County Wicklow.

"This highlights the extent of funding that is available at a time of plenty. Sadly, despite that enhanced funding, Bray is struggling to meet the cost of an Arts Centre that will be a vital feature of cultural life not just in the town, but in the county as a whole.

"Yet again we are losing out and what is disturbing is that the cost of meeting this shortfall will starve the Arts Centre of the necessary injection of money for establishing and running the Centre on completion of the building. This project will be enormously hampered from Day One unless there is a serious effort made to provide sufficient resources to meet these costs.

"It should be remembered that in 1997 when the Arts Centre was first designed it was on the understanding that, it would be built on a 50/50 funding basis between the local authorities and national government. That balance is now totally tilted again the local contribution of both private and public money " said Deputy McManus.