Ireland’s Arts Council will fund 313 organisations in 2007 through its revenue funding funding programme, the Council’s main grants programme for arts organisations. “We received over 400 applications from arts organisations throughout the country for 2007 – production companies; arts venues; festivals; resources and service organizations,” said Council Director, Mary Cloake. “Some 63 of these were from applicants who had never previously applied to the Arts Council and we were very pleased to be able to fund 13 of these organisations for the first time. A total of 313 organisations have been funded to date this year under this revenue programme.” “We regret that within the resources we had available we could not support every good project, but we have to make our allocations within our overall budget”. The Chair of the Arts Council, Olive Braiden, said that, “including the €5.8m we announced in December, we are now delighted that we are able to offer over €55m in grants to date. This includes an increase of €1.3m to the Abbey Theatre, bringing their total funding for 2007 up to €8.5m. This round of revenue grant-aid amounts to almost 70% of our total funding received from Government.” “Total demand on the Council across all funding schemes for 2007 will be close to double the amount that is available. Further rounds of funding for bursaries, awards, small festivals and other programmes will come later in the year.” For more information, CLICK HERE