Major funding boost for Wexford Festival Opera

WEXFORD Festival Opera is to receive funding support of €100,000 from an overall Fáilte Ireland festival support fund totalling €2,964,500.

The announcement was made by the Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Brendan Griffin TD, who said the money will go towards enhancing and promoting 40 different festivals around the country in addition to developing new events.

Minister Paul Kehoe welcomed the news and said Wexford Festival Opera is ‘a major drawer of visitors to the county’.

Commenting on the announcement he said: ‘I have been working closely with Minister Griffin to ensure Wexford is considered for future funding.’

He said everyone reaps the benefits of the prestigious event each year due to the increase in visitors to the town and county at that time of the year.

Minister Michael D’Arcy echoed his party colleague’s comments and said the money was allocated under the Regional Festivals and Participative Events programme.

‘ The programme is reviewed every year with a view to generating incremental visitor growth and revenue,’ he said.

‘Festivals and events are critical for tourism growth as they specifically attract more than 200,000 overseas visitors to Ireland and contribute more than €108m to the economy every year.’

Minister D’Arcy also welcomed the announcement and said that funding will be used to enhance and develop new festival ideas and support different celebrations in Wexford.

He said communities will benefit across Wexford as Fáilte Ireland identified festivals as a key component for tourism growth, particularly during off-season times, in its plans for 2019.

Minister Griffin said festivals play an important role in delivering visitor experiences and added: ‘ They often encourage people to visit areas outside of traditional tourism hotspots and outside of peak times - helping to spread the benefits of tourism to communities throughout Ireland.’

Fáilte Ireland CEO, Paul Kelly, said his organisation is ‘very much committed to a greater spread of regional activity as well as supporting a longer tourism year.’

Fáilte Ireland’s Head of Festivals, Ciara Sugrue, commented: ‘We are aiming to grow overseas visitors coming to Ireland to attend a festival to 300,000 by 2022.’

‘We have identified a number of St Patrick’s Day events for development throughout 2019 in order to attract more overseas visitors,’ she said.

‘We will be working with festival organisers to ramp up activity for 2020.