Frustration as Fáilte Ireland festival funding is stopped
INSIDE the new Lantern Presents box office on Rowe Street, Director and founder Brian Byrne is crunching the numbers. How many people can you safely socially distance inside a Spiegeltent? How many bathrooms would such a crowd need? With roughly one third of the regular capacity of the Spiegeltent, can the numbers add up to make it financially viable?
While Brian and his team seem to have found answers to most of the questions, one thing he’s struggling to find an answer for is the disappearance of a vital stream of funding at a time when it’s needed most.
As a for-profit enterprise, the Wexford Spiegeltent Festival does not qualify for Arts Council funding like, say, Wexford Festival Opera. What it does qualify for though is a slice of Fáilte Ireland’s regional fund to help festivals around the county with their marketing and promotion for ticket sales.
Last year, the Spiegeltent qualified for €4,000 in funding. This year, however, when margins are thin as it is, Brian was disappointed to find that, despite a huge push towards ‘staycations’, Fáilte Ireland has seemingly withdrawn their regional support for festivals going ahead post- Covid.
A quick glance at the Fáilte Ireland website states their position with little explanation.
‘In light of the severe limitations and challenges affecting the festivals and events industry and the broader tourism sector in these exceptional times, we are working to redefine the scope of the Festivals Innovation Programme into the future,’ it says. ‘For this reason, the Programme has temporarily been suspended, and no new applications are being considered at present.’
It would seem therefore that in seeking to ‘ redefine’ how it support festivals, Fáilte Ireland has withdrawn its support at a pivotal time.
‘Last year we got €4,000,’ Brian explained. ‘If we got similar this year it would make a massive difference. Although it doesn’t sound that much, simply put: €4,000 could pay for four crew members for the duration of the festival. That’s also money in Wexford people’s pockets.’
Getting acts on the stage in front of a crowd is an incredibly difficult task this year for Brian and his team.
‘We’re trying to be ready and have all our ducks in a row, but funding this year is a major challenge,’ he conceded.
‘Obviously, we’ll be dealing with less of a capacity so box office income is severely reduced. Also, sponsorship looks set to be reduced as a lot of our regular sponsors have gone through a difficult couple of months. We did expect that we’d be successful in obtaining the Fáilte Ireland funding this year and it’s really surprising and disheartening to learn that they’ve suspended the fund. It’s not a massive amount of money from Fáilte Ireland’s point of view either, which makes it even more disappointing.’
A further bugbear of Brian’s is that, following the increase of the VAT rate from nine per cent to 13.5 per cent in 2018 (which, needless to say, impacted on ticket sales), Fáilte Ireland was granted a further €30 million in funding to help festivals offset this.
‘Obviously the increase in the VAT rate had an impact on commercial events like ours, but not on not-forprofit events. Fáilte Ireland at the time was given €30 million to help festivals, and yet the regional funding in Wexford has never increased. Where did that funding go? It would have been nice to see some of it in Wexford.’
Despite the difficulties, Brian remains unshakably optimistic that this year’s festival will go ahead.
‘We’re doing our best to ensure the festival goes ahead, not just for ourselves, but for the artists and the crew who are relying on it for work; and for the hospitality sector in Wexford, which is just hanging in there. We’re looking at potentially putting 9,000 people through the tent over the three weeks of the festival. That’s bound to have a positive impact on the town and county. As well as that, we’ll have 30 acts earning and local staff and crew employed.’
‘It’s just disappointing that, in the current environment when such an emphasis is being placed on the staycation, we’re trying to improve Wexford’s offering and at a time when we would’ve expected to get a little leg up from Fáilte Ireland, we’ve actually got the opposite.’
WHEN SUCH AN EMPHASIS IS BEING PLACED IN STAYCATION... WE WOULD’VE EXPECTED TO GET A LITTLE LEG UP FROM FÁILTE IRELAND, WE’VE ACTUALLY GOT THE OPPOSITE