Rooney closes the Gate behind her

Art Scape:For people connected with theatre, thinking of the Gate without Marie Rooney is . . . unthinkable. Deputy director for the past 12 years, she's actually worked at the theatre for nearly 30 years, going back to the days of Hilton Edwards.

But now Marie Rooney has decided to leave the theatre and go it alone. If she wants a new challenge, and to work on other projects, she says, "it's now or never". When she talks about the future, you sense a freedom looming after so long working with a small team in a tight organisation. The Gate has been a huge part of her life, first with Edwards, who was inspirational, she says, then the transition as Michael Colgan took over and "brought a fantastic dynamic".

"I've loved my work in the Gate, it's a unique place and a beautiful building, and they're great people to work with and I feel privileged to have been part of this. It's a great team, who will do anything they can to make things work. It's been a great opportunity to work with talented people at the top of the profession, it's been a constant stimulus. I will miss the Gate, but I look forward to new challenges."

Those challenges include setting up a company after she leaves in February to do PR, management, project management, production and marketing. Because she was at the Gate for so long, she has worked in every area - she was even production manager for a period - as well as on the building projects and on the Beckett and Pinter festivals. That diversity of work has been the appeal, and is what she hopes will continue.

Death knell for Northern arts?

The Ulster Orchestra should be feeling on top of the world. But, in spite of being flushed with the success of last week's two highly praised concerts, with the German counter tenor Andreas Scholl in Dublin's National Concert Hall and in Belfast's Grand Opera House, together with its lively Belfast Festival concerts by cabaret singer Ute Lemper and by The Chieftains, it is contemplating an uncertain future, writes Jane Coyle. The reason? The anticipated huge shortfall in the Northern Ireland Assembly's budget allocation to the arts.

"On the one hand, we are helping to promote international artists such as Andreas Scholl and Bryn Terfel (who will be performing with the orchestra in Dublin and Belfast in 2008), producing CDs, touring in the Border region and expanding our outreach programme. And on the other, we are being hampered in our planning by the likely implications of the funding situation," says the orchestra's chief executive, David Byers.

Last week, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) issued a statement in response to the announcement of the draft budget for 2008/11 and called upon the Assembly to rethink its allocation. It has just issued a second statement, in which it outlines the clearer emerging picture.

The Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure's (DCAL) budget planning figures indicate that the Council is likely to receive a nominal net increase of £4.25 million (€6.1 million), which represents a per capita increase from £6.13 to £7.89 (€8.81-€11.34) by year three. The figures, however, are guaranteed only for the first year, with the increases for the subsequent two years being provisional. This falls well short of the council's request for around £9 million (€13 million) per annum, to bring it towards parity with the rest of the UK and Ireland.

"The people of Northern Ireland should have the same cultural entitlement as their neighbours on these islands," says Róisín McDonough, chief executive of ACNI. "But the prospect of achieving parity with them remains as distant as ever."

"Years of chronic underfunding have been made much worse by the decline in Lottery arts funds and the (British) government's diversion of a further £4.5 million (€6.5 million) from the sector to help fund the 2012 London Olympics," says ACNI chairman Rosemary Kelly. "It is tantamount to sounding a death knell over large areas of arts activity here. It is disappointing that the overwhelming cross-party support . . . calling on the Executive committee to raise arts funding to, at least, the UK average, has not been reflected in the draft budget."

"It is not only ourselves who will suffer," says Byers. "These issues will affect the whole arts sector. Northern Ireland has become the very poor country cousin of Scotland, Wales, England and the Irish Republic and the future existence of the Ulster Orchestra, the Lyric Theatre, the Belfast Festival, the Grand Opera House and many other important but less headline-attracting organisations is now under serious threat.

"Ours is a very expensive organisation to run. We have a full-time staff of 80 people and, until the beginning of 2009, we will not be able to use the Ulster Hall, which is undergoing extensive refurbishment . . . We want to go back into the Ulster Hall with a real bang and help contribute to the profile of cultural tourism here. So, this is a crucial time and we must persuade the politicians to lift the arts line. We simply can't afford to be downcast - now is the time for us to get out there and shout about it."

Ford on Frank

The American writer Richard Ford is to give the first Frank O'Connor Lecture at UCC on Tuesday, inaugurating what Colbert Kearney, professor of English, has described as the restitution owed to the Cork author by the Cork college, writes Mary Leland. All the same, at the launch of what it is hoped will be an annual lecture series, you might wonder why it took five speakers to introduce a speaker whose speech was about the subject matter of a forthcoming speaker. Even allowing for the institution's historic neglect of O'Connor, the English department (which has also provided for a new research and teaching fellowship in O'Connor studies) is overplaying its inherited guilt, especially as the launch at the university was essentially a case of the college talking to itself. Even the Lord Mayor, Cllr Donal Counihan, is a former member of staff of UCC's centre for adult and continuing education.

Perhaps the reason for the gathering, which was addressed not only by Prof Kearney, by the Lord Mayor, and by the president of UCC, Dr Michael Murphy, was to acknowledge the financial support of Anglo Irish Bank, whose representative Dan Kelleher reminded us of the bank's admittedly significant sponsorship of the restoration of UCC's collection of ogham stones. While Dr Murphy noted that the O'Connor lecture series on aspects of modern fiction continues the tradition of the university's "third mission" through public access and the encouragement of independent and creative thought, author Gearóid Ó Crualaoich admitted that he was mystified as to why he had been asked to address the gathering at all, especially as it might be thought that the lecture series on modern fiction was in honour of an author who could be considered a fiction in himself. UCC, said O Crualaoich, would have been an irrelevance to O'Connor, and he to it; yet as a prodigal son who had never really returned O'Connor, through these lectures, was returning now, fitting comfortably into UCC's new dispensation of outreach and inclusiveness.

Richard Ford's lecture will take place next Tuesday, Nov 13th, at 5 pm in Boole 2, UCC

"In Ireland it is your legal right to have a speeding ticket served to you in Irish. To avoid being fined, speak nothing but Irish to the policeman. The chances are he won't be able to remember enough schoolboy Irish to complete the procedure." This is from comedian (and Irish speaker) Dara Ó Briain, from a section on Éire in the good fun QI Annual (Faber), a book-tie in to the TV show QI, hosted by Stephen Fry and on which Ó Briain is a regular guest. Among his other bits and bobs of Irish ephemera, he also includes some "ludicrously long Irish words with impossibly complicated spelling", such as caoinfhulangach (tolerant) and réamhchoinníolach (precondition).

It's great to see Ó Briain making it to the shortlist of nominees for best live stand up - though his career excels in TV too - in the British Comedy Awards this week. Joining him on the Irish podium is The Graham Norton Show, nominated for best new comedy entertainment, and actor and writer Sharon Horgan from Drogheda, nominated in the Best Newcomer category for her work on Pulling and Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive. Famously descried by the Observer as "the funniest woman you've never heard of", her sparkling comedy doesn't get much of an outing here, as it's often been on digital channels not widely accessed. Her new series Angelo's (which she wrote and will star in) begins next Thursday night on Channel Five and she will feature on next Thursday's Arts page.