Fáilte Ireland: Arts group cash claim 'incorrect'
A claim by a Cork arts group that it “flatly refused” funding from Fáilte Ireland has been firmly refuted by the country’s main tourism body.
Geata Arts in Clonakilty is claiming that it turned down a “desperately needed” €120,000 funding package from Fáilte Ireland for its Samhain Parade in 2022.
The group says it rejected the funding in an act of resistance to what it describes as the “top-down strategy of corporate homogenization” of Ireland’s authentic living heritage.
However, Fáilte Ireland, Ireland’s national tourism development authority, insists it never committed the funding to Geata Arts and that, in fact, Geata Arts had been unsuccessful in a public procurement competition for the funding.
A statement from Fáilte Ireland said: “Fáilte Ireland has written to the organisers of Geata Arts to clarify that no funding offer was ever made to Geata Arts and that Fáilte Ireland never committed funding to the organisation. Claims that a €120,000 funding package was offered to, and subsequently refused by, Geata Arts are incorrect.”
In a statement circulated this week, Geata Arts said: “In 2022, the Clonakilty Samhain Festival made the principled decision to refuse a €120,000 funding offer from Fáilte Ireland’s Festival and Events team because the committee strictly opposed the agency’s strategy of prioritising the ‘creation of cultural assets’ over the preservation of existing, authentic traditions in a country already overflowing with cultural heritage.”
Geata Arts also claimed that Fáilte Ireland has funnelled over €13.25 million into state-engineered, “highly commercialised cultural assets” like the Púca Festival in County Meath and the Home of Halloween destination schemes.
The group said: “The historical lineage of the ancestral torchlit procession to the Hill of Tlachtga was aggressively subsumed by Fáilte Ireland's state engineered Púca Festival. This heavy-handed institutional erasure sparked deep local outrage, resulting in legal motions and grievances brought directly to the Dáil floor by affected local creators in 2019.”
Fáilte Ireland responded by insisting that the torchlit procession has not been replaced by the Púca Festival.
The body said: “Members of the torchlit procession take part in Púca’s lighting of the fire event which celebrates Ireland as the authentic home of Halloween. They also continue to carry out community celebrations at the Hill of Tlachtga independently.
The Púca festival is delivered in partnership with local communities, cultural stakeholders, and tourism partners, combining long-standing local traditions with a broader tourism offering that attracts visitors to the region and showcases Ireland's unique cultural heritage,” they said.
So far in 2026, Fáilte Ireland’s Regional Festivals Fund has provided €623,250 to 31 local authorities and will support approximately 250 festivals across the country.