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Following the outcry over the recent draft budget for Northern Ireland (see AP issue 157), Arts Minister Edwin Poots, speaking at Art at the Heart, the annual conference of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) at the Grand Opera House last week, said he had "fought hard to secure the best deal that I could for the arts", and had gained "a significant capital allocation of £32.5m for investment in arts and cultural infrastructure".
Although welcoming the capital cash, ACNI says that the increase of £6.75m over three years, of which only year one is guaranteed, is not enough. In a statement, ACNI said, [Our] request per annum is approximately £9m, and with the prospect of an additional uplift of only £500,000 for next year, the sector faces immediate financial problems.