Cash-strapped fire service is owed Û1.6m for call-outs

By Dara Bradley

The organisers of the Galway Arts Festival are confident that – despite the recession – the event can bring an injection of around €20 million into the local economy this year.

Artistic Director of the Festival, Paul Fahy, is hopeful that the straightened economic times may actually benefit the Festival in 2010 as Galwegians choose ‘staycations’, and Irish people choose Galway, ahead of foreign holidays.

“An independent report commissioned last year found that the direct spend was €19.m million, which is the amount that was spent directly on hotels and in shops. But the direct spend is actually a conservative way to calculate the Festival’s value. The impact the Festival has on the other 50 weeks of the year is harder to calculate but in terms of the brand and in terms of one of the top three things people associate with Galway, the Festival has a value far greater than the €20 million,” said Mr Fahy, who yesterday launched the new Festival box office which is located at the tourist office on Forster Street this year.

“Fáilte Ireland and all the experts are predicting that the number of people who are staying at home this year is increasing. I think people might come to Galway for the weekend or a couple of nights for the Festival when in other years they would be hopping on a plane to Spain.

“The new motorway will also help because now it takes just two hours and a bit to get here from Dublin and people can pop down for a show whereas in other years it would have taken five hours with all the traffic,” he said.

Mr Fahy said Forster Street and the Fairgreen is set to become a ‘hub’ for the Festival with the box office located in the tourist office and the building that housed the former Habitat store being used as the Festival gallery, which had been at Merchant’s Road for the past three years.

He said the building, which was kindly donated by the owners, Jack Nohilly and Pat Walsh, was modern and bright and once adapted and converted will be ideal for artist Brian Bourke’s exhibition Polyttych.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.