The Arts Council has recently terminated all funding to the Irish Writers’ Centre, an important national institution for the support, development and promotion of writers and writing.
While we acknowledge that cuts are inevitable in the present economic downturn, this decision is nevertheless disturbing. It comes at the end of a notably successful year for the centre, a year which has seen audience numbers and the centre’s participation in the country’s literary culture at an all-time high.
We therefore strongly urge that this decision be reversed and funding for the work of a thriving cultural organisation (€200,000 in 2008) be reinstated urgently.
John Banville
Sebastian Barry
Maeve Binchy
Dermot Bolger
John Boyne
Liam Browne
Ciaran Carson
Prof DanielleClarke, UCD
Harry Clifton
Dr Steve Coleman, NUI Maynooth
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Philip Cummings
Peter Cunningham
John F. Deane
Celia De Fréine
Roddy Doyle
Paul Durcan
Anne Enright
Prof Tadhg Foley, NUI Galway
Richard Ford
David Gardiner, Creighton University Press
Prof Luke Gibbons, University of Notre Dame
Hugo Hamilton
Dr Derek Hand, St Patrick’s College, Dublin
Kerry Hardie
Sean Hardie
Jack Harte
Aidan Higgins
Alannah Hopkin
Jerzy Jarniewicz
Prof Margaret Kelleher, NUI Maynooth
Claire Kilroy
Edna Longley, Professor Emerita, QU Belfast
Michael Longley, Ireland Professor of Poetry
Deirdre Madden
Derek Mahon
Prof Kerby A Miller, University of Missouri
Prof Sean Moore, University of New Hampshire
Paul Muldoon
Éilis Ní Dhuibhne
Dr Clare O’Halloran, UCC
Sean O’Brien
Joseph O’Connor
Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin
Timothy O’Grady
Glenn Patterson
Justin Quinn
Ian Sansom
Will Self
Matthew Sweeney
Prof Lawrence Taylor, NUI Maynooth
Alan Titley
Shaun Traynor
Prof Kevin Whelan, director, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Dublin
Jonathan Williams
