Northern Ireland Office

Secretary of State, Rt Hon Peter Hain, MP, has announced that three of Northern Ireland’s community festivals are to receive additional funding.

Féile an Phobail West Belfast, Ardoyne Fleadh Cheoíl and the Greater New Lodge Festival will all receive an offer of transitional funding for this year only.

This will be in addition to funding already allocated by the Northern Ireland Events Company (NIEC) from the new £450,000 Community Festivals Fund launched in February of this year.

The Secretary of State also confirmed that government would consider any request for support from the Maiden City Festival, which was one of the four community festivals in receipt of transitional funding last year.

The Secretary of State said: “The Northern Ireland Events Company has been inundated with requests for funding from established and new festivals with the result that the first two of three £150,000 tranches have been vastly oversubscribed resulting in difficult decisions in the allocation of funds available.

“In the case of a small number of community festivals awarded transitional funding in previous years the decrease in funding this year was of a scale likely to undermine the range of community benefits in their respective areas at a particularly sensitive time.  

“In view of this Government decided that a short review should be undertaken to consider whether any further transitional funding should be made available in 2006 for the purpose of enabling these festivals more time to secure alternative sources of future funding.

“To date three of the festivals have been reviewed - Féile an Phobail West Belfast, Ardoyne Fleadh Cheoíl and, Greater New Lodge Festival, and they are to receive offers of additional transitional funding of up to £100,000, £20,000 and £25,400 respectively.”

Note to Editors

The new Community Festivals Fund was launched in February 2006 with a budget of £450,000.

The Fund is administered by the Northern Ireland Events Company (NIEC).

The Fund is divided into three tranches of £150,000 covering festivals taking place between April - July; August - November; and December - March.

The first tranche attracted 47 applications and the second tranche, 32 applications.

In tranche 2, Féile an Phobail West Belfast was awarded up to £45,000, Ardoyne Fleadh Cheoíl was awarded up to £17,000 and Greater New Lodge Festival was awarded up to £13,000.

Full details of the awards in tranche one and two can be accessed on the Northern Ireland Events website .