Madam, - In response to Fiach Mac Conghail's letter of April 9th, the facts are that in 2008 the Abbey has received €10 million and Druid has received €837,540 in theatre funding from the Arts Council.
Inviting a discussion about theatre funding cannot be characterised as an attempt to weaken the Abbey. In her recent remarks Garry Hynes explicitly stated: "You can't say that the Abbey is over-funded, but everyone else is under-funded".
We need to work with all theatres in Ireland to maximise theatre funding and to redress the imbalance of funding between Dublin and the rest of the country.
But any fair commentator must agree that there is unfair advantage at play when the National Theatre, with annual funding of almost 12 times that of Druid, buys the rights to works that it does not intend using for three years in the clear knowledge that this action effectively stymies the Druid/O'Casey Revolution project which had been announced and was due to begin in 2009.
Ar scáth an Abbey a mhairimid!
- Yours, etc,
TARLACH DE BLÁCAM, Board Member, Druid Theatre Company, Inis Meáin, Árainn, Cuan na Gaillimhe.
Madam, - Ursula Hough-Gormley (April 9th) misses the point of this correspondence, which is about State funding of theatre, not about private donations.
In stating that the contribution by the 6th Earl of Longford "has been ignored in writings about the Gate Theatre", and in attaching my name to this lacuna, it is clear that she has not troubled to consult my book The Boys(Gill & Macmillan, 1994,) in which there are over 30 references to Lord Longford's munificence and to his numerous "drives", as he described them, to "keep the Gate open".
In fact, I made a point of exposing the way in which Edwards and MacLiammóir perennially and callously denigrated his generosity.
- Yours, etc,
CHRISTOPHER FITZ-SIMON, Richmond Hill, Monkstown, Co Dublin.