I welcome the report by Helen Boaden on RTÉ's symphony and concert orchestras entitled Ensuring a Sustainable Future. However, I do not think that is really the problem. In looking through the report, RTÉ talks about how funding the orchestras presents a challenge to its financial circumstances and the fact that, as the national broadcaster, it is legally required to maintain them. It also refers to how the orchestras have been underresourced for years and how RTÉ could not continue to fund them because of shifting consumer behaviours and preferences, and a decrease in the staffing for both orchestras and in the number of musicians. RTÉ recommends that the national symphony orchestra would remain a national cultural institution.

There are two examples of possibly the greatest orchestras in the world. One is Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which has Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian players. It is a cultural icon above politics that travels the world. The second is El Sistema from Venezuela, which has created youth orchestras all over the world and its players have gone on to be great musicians and great conductors all over the world. My point is that we cannot argue that we do not have the money for our National Symphony Orchestra or our second orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, or that we only have €20 million for this and €10 million for that and €30 million for something else. We have to decide that they are an extraordinary part of our culture-----

Hear, hear.

-----and that they are the pinnacle of what other communities are trying to do through the power, elevation, energy and vitality of music. We cannot argue whether there should be this, that or the other. They must be part of our cultural heritage and musical life - our expressive life.

Absolutely.

If they are to be in RTÉ then they are to get the money to be ring-fenced and developed so that the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra can travel. At the moment the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra cannot travel and it has been reduced to 68 players. The RTÉ Concert Orchestra cannot do a lot of things because it does not have the money. It is an outrage that we cannot argue for them on the grounds of the power of music - the absolute encased power of the beating heart of all our percussive hearts - which is where we begin with the heartbeat of music. We have to argue it at that level.

If one looks at countries that have taken music and made it come alive for the gangs of Venezuela or for the political impasses of Israel and Palestine, that is the power of music. That is what I call for today. I know the Minister to be a very fine Minister who does not argue on the grounds of whether she has €20 million or whether it should be a cultural institution. Both of those orchestras should remain alive in our country. I wanted to put that on the record today because it is so important. It is not politics. We have the money. It is about the development of our expressive, cultural, rhythmic selves. I will leave you with this, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. Thank you for the time. It is most interesting-----

There is a lot of injury time.

-----that in the leaving certificate we give 25 points for mathematics but we will not do it for music as a subject.

I am trying to reverse that argument and come at it from a completely different angle.

Well said.