It is great to see him back and I hope he is recovering well. Best of luck to him. It is important to point out that the aggregate relates to the amount of money expended since 1980, a 45-year term. It is not that we are hoping to spend this money into the future; it is an aggregate. It is an issue that comes up with a lot of State agencies. It is clunky that they have to keep coming back to the Minister of the day t…
TDs / Patrick O'Donovan
Patrick O'Donovan
Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
0
questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
73,474
words spoken in the chamber
73,468 as a minister, 6 as a TD
228
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 346 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Contributions |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 6 |
| March 2025 | 27 |
| April 2025 | 9 |
| May 2025 | 32 |
| June 2025 | 36 |
| July 2025 | 0 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 1 |
| October 2025 | 79 |
| November 2025 | 28 |
| December 2025 | 57 |
| January 2026 | 21 |
| February 2026 | 1 |
| March 2026 | 28 |
| April 2026 | 0 |
| May 2026 | 20 |
| June 2026 | 0 |
| July 2026 | 0 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 0 |
| October 2026 | 1 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 314 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Limerick County 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fine Gael 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media 23 January 2025 to 1 June 2025
- office Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport 2 June 2025 to now
The Deputy is not suggesting we nationalising the film companies?
Not to labour the point, copyright and workers' rights are matters for the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment and section 491, as Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, is a matter in the first instance for the Minister for Finance, but it is my role as Minister for culture to convince the Minister for Finance to widen the role of section 481. In this regard the Department has been quite successful over recent years. N…
No landlords.
By the landlords.
Online safety is a key Government priority. We have taken major steps forward in recent years and with Coimisiún na Meán the heart of our online safety framework, we have the tools to improve online safety, in particular for children and vulnerable adults. The online safety framework comprises the online safety code, the EU Digital Services Act, DSA, under which An Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland's digital services co-o…
We have had extensive engagement in the Department on this, in particular in the context of Ireland's Presidency of the EU Council in the second half of next year. I am very conscious of the complexities of the issue and the fact that Deputy Gibney has raised an issue regarding age verification. How do we verify someone's age without having a data set that we know is verifiable? If someone says they are not prepared …
I am glad to inform the House that I inhabit the real world and most of the parents, teachers and people in the real world I speak to are concerned about children online and age verification. While Deputy Gibney might not think it is as important an issue as I do, as I said at committee it is important. Deputy Ó Snodaigh will recall that the last time we had to use the Government's data set for a particular piece of …
I thank the Deputy for welcoming the fact that the work on the Crawford Art Gallery is going ahead. The national cultural institution investment programme is a key investment programme for the Department under the national development plan. All of the projects, including the redevelopment of the Crawford Art Gallery, are progressed in line with the infrastructure guidelines. The purpose of the infrastructure guidelin…
The Deputy is quite right; there have been delays. We are now in a position whereby the contractor will be in place in January and it is to be hoped the project will be completed in 2028. The Deputy omitted to say, perhaps in error, that in the intervening period since the preliminary business case was completed, inflation in the construction sector has been running at 40% or more. It is a complicated and challenging…
Nobody wants to go out of his or her way to look stupid. The reality, as the Deputy knows as well as I do, is that when one goes under the bonnet of buildings like Leinster House, for example, one finds in the detailed design and in the final planning, as I saw in previous Departments I was in, that sometimes the depth of the problems associated with heritage buildings, in particular, is only discovered after the fac…
I propose to take Questions Nos. 6, 7, 23, 32 and 56 together.
I was delighted to have secured an allocation for a successor scheme to the basic income for the arts pilot as part of budget 2026. While the detail of the future scheme will need to be agreed by the Government, this is a major milestone for the arts in Ireland. I am particularly pleased that the research my Department conducted provided the Government w…
I welcome that people are so supportive of the scheme. There is a complication with regard to how the scheme runs forward because the pilot was due to end on 31 December, but out of savings in our Department's resources we are able to extend it to February to give an extra two months. At the same time, I mentioned the level of consultation we are doing in the Department. It is probably the largest consultative proces…
That is not the case.
I have not worked out that detail yet. As soon as I do, I will take it to the Government.
With regard to journalists, we have journalistic schemes that are operated from my Department, including the court reporting scheme and the supporting democracy schemes. The Deputy might not be aware of them but we support them. I have not dismissed other Departments using basic income, but I am not the Minister for agriculture…
With regard to the Bill that was debated last week, Deputy Ó Snodaigh knows quite well my view with regard to comedy. That pertains to the Arts Council and Arts Council grants, which are a totally different thing. I have made my views clear with regard to the Arts Council and the funding of things like country music, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, comedy and other genres of arts which are currently not funded by the Ar…
The Government is committed to the rollout of high-speed broadband right across the country. The national broadband plan, NBP, is the Government's initiative to deliver high-speed broadband services to all premises in Ireland where the commercial telecom operators' reach will not extend. In addition to the work being progress by National Broadband Ireland right across the NBP intervention areas, progress is also bein…
I thank the Deputy. She is right in relation to the blue area in general. We continue to receive very high volumes of queries with regard to blue areas for high-speed broadband and poor speeds and services and things like that. Notwithstanding the fact that there are issues - if the Deputy wants to give me the particular details with regard to specific parts of Skerries and Balbriggan, I will have the Department look…
There is a Dublin-specific issue we have to address. Fadó fadó when cable television came into people's houses - we did not have that luxury in the country, I do not know whether An Cathaoirleach Gníomhach did and Deputy Ó Snodaigh probably did - they had to break footpaths when they brought in cables and in many cases, left no ducting so there is a significant problem involving ducting in a lot of urban areas, parti…
As outlined in the programme for Government, the Government believes that culture and the arts are essential to a well-rounded society providing opportunities for education, expression and community engagement. My Department is taking a number of steps to improve, increase and widen access to the arts.
A network of cultural infrastructure exists throughout the country with the majority in the ownership of local auth…
The Deputy is right. It is 2025. We should not have a situation where in some of our national cultural institutions, people with disabilities cannot go in the front door. That is the reality because of delays. Deputy Ó Snodaigh and I spoke about this a while ago regarding the rehabilitation of sensitive buildings and architecturally conserved areas. There are people with mobility problems who cannot go in the front d…
I will be bringing forward proposals to Government shortly regarding the new arts capital scheme. It will be along the same lines as the sports capital grant scheme. It is a small amount of money to start with. We are testing the waters in year one but I hope to grow it exponentially over the next couple of years. It will be local authority-dependent. They own most of the properties around the country. It will not be…
As outlined in the programme for Government, the Government believes that culture and the arts are essential to a well-rounded society providing opportunities for education, expression and community engagement. My Department is taking a number of steps to improve, increase and widen access to the arts.
A network of cultural infrastructure exists throughout the country with the majority in the ownership of local auth…
As I said a while ago, I understand Dunamaise Arts Centre is due to bring forward an application. It was to bring this forward in September, I think, but it has been delayed for some reason. Once that application is brought forward, it can be assessed. The important thing in the wider scheme for these centres is we will have an arts capital scheme that is the first of its kind, as soon as we have eligibility and a pr…
The last point the Deputy made is the most important. All these arts centres will only be as good as the local community that supports them. No amount of schemes, interventions and grants will ever supplement what the local community can do by attending and supporting artists, whether touring or local. That is the most important issue. Whether they are in parish halls, purpose-built centres like the Dunamaise Arts Ce…