We need to build on arts and culture, says Desmond

EXPLOITING OUR STRENGTHS:IRELAND NEEDS to learn how to "monetise" its culture, businessman Dermot Desmond told the conference.

Mr Desmond said Ireland could build on its existing strengths in music and other forms of culture and he suggested the creation of “the best university for culture and the performing arts in the world”.

His emphasis on culture as a means of driving Ireland’s broader interests around the world was echoed in other contributions. “The fact that we have such a strong culture as a country really gives us one of the big advantages of any nation in the world,” Denis O’Brien, chairman of Digicel, told the conference in Farmleigh House in Dublin.

“We are famous for our writers, our artists, our poets and we are not famous for much else,” he said, adding that his cell phone group had got a licence to operate in Samoa because the country’s prime minister had been educated by an Irish religious order.

Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism Martin Cullen, one of a large number of Government ministers to attend the forum, said he disagreed with aspects of the McCarthy report, which has recommended cuts to reduce expenditure by €5.4 billion.

A number of speakers raised ethical and corporate governance issues. Basil Geoghegan, managing director of Deutsche Bank London, said there was a perception in his sector that Ireland had an “ethical issue” to deal with, which had come to the fore in the economic crisis. He contrasted the Irish reaction to the crisis to the speed with which the US had dealt with Bernard Madoff.

Irish people were being “self-indulgent” in the time they were taking to deal with the issues, he said. The view abroad was that Ireland was expensive and its troubles were of its own making but there was no schadenfreude about our troubles.

He stressed the importance of getting “nuggets” of good news out about Ireland and on concentrating on our strengths.

There was further criticism of the Irish third-level sector from Prof Martina Newell-McLoughlin of the University of California, who said US universities considered Irish universities to be “a bunch of ivory towers” with no joined-up thinking. “We need to get past the tribalism that exists in Ireland and make sure we don’t become risk-averse,” she said on Saturday.

At the close of the two-day forum, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin thanked the 180 figures from business, arts and broadcasting who attended.

The event was developed from an idea by economist David McWilliams, who proposed that the Government should hold an economic conference similar to the one held every January in Davos, Switzerland.

Delegates attended a dinner hosted by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan at Dublin Castle on Saturday night and attended the All-Ireland final between Cork and Kerry yesterday afternoon.