The Belfast bid for the 2024 Fleadh Cheoil has become the latest topic to stir division at City Hall after a councillor condemned a £20,000 “junket” for council staff members and musicians travelling to the USA.
At Belfast City Council ’s meeting of its City Growth and Regeneration Committee, People Before Profit Councillor Fiona Ferguson criticised a trip for senior staff members, including the Chief Executive and Lord Mayor, to attend an event in New York next month to discuss the bid with US Comhaltas vote holders.
The council intends to send local musicians and four council staff to the showcase at a cost of at least £20,000. At the committee the director admitted that figure only included the expenses for 12 musicians, and did not include expenses for four council staff. The SDLP unsuccessfully tried to reduce council staff attending the showcase to two members.
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One of the biggest festivals of traditional Irish culture in the world, the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann attracts many tens of thousands of international visitors each year. In its 60 year history the festival has only been held once in Northern Ireland, in Derry.
Ards Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, a cross-community non profit organisation promoting and fostering Irish traditional music, song and dance in the Ards area, has joined with Belfast Council to make a bid for the festival.
In March a vote takes place to confirm the location for the Fleadh. Several voting members are resident in the United States as part of the executive committee for the US Comhaltas.
The council report on the bid states: “This showcasing opportunity will highlight Belfast’s music, as well as our city’s wider contemporary cultural offering to a range of influencers, major tour operators, media, and other travel operators.”
It adds: “As part of the bidding process, it is normal that bidding towns and cities visit the US Comhaltas as well as the Great Britain Comhaltas in conjunction with their bidding partners to discuss their bid with the voting members.”
At this week’s Belfast committee meeting, People Before Profit Councillor Fiona Ferguson said: “With the times we’re living in, while we are being asked to set a rate far above the usual, and not just because the cost of living, but also because of the need to give workers a necessary uplift, I think this looks terrible. I don’t think the public would see this as anything other than a junket.
“I find it very difficult that it is being landed on us the month before, with no breakdown of costs. I think for us to pay for three officers and a Lord Mayor to be having cocktails in the Dead Rabbit, while we are looking to put up rates to the extent we are, is a really, really bad look.”
She added: “It’s a shame, because the artists on the list are an incredible representation of the music we have here, and it would be great to give them such a platform. But when we are talking about putting up the prices of services of the council, I find it hard to justify this decision, which again is a shame, as we all enthusiastically support the Fleadh.”
The line-up for New York includes Emmy winner and Mercury Prize Nominee Hannah Peel as curator and headline performer, the Robocobra-Quartet, Winnie Amac, Joshua Burnside, and Kwame Daniels.
Sinn Féin Councillor Ronan McLaughlin said: “The Fleadh Cheoil is a huge event which can bring a significant amount of investment and jobs into the city.” He added: “In some of these ventures you have to speculate to accumulate, and we are going to have to put our money where our mouths are to try and secure such a huge event for the city.
“It will be great for our citizens, it will boost the economy, it will create employment and help artists in the city. We do have to weigh things up with the cost of living, but on balance I think this one meets the criteria.”
DUP Councillor Gareth Spratt said: “It is wise in this climate that we as councillors try to be prudent with ratepayers money, and I hope it extends to committees and full council meetings as we set the rate, and I also hope we can have grown up discussions.
“But I do think we do have to showcase the city in the best possible light. We can’t attend these events and expect the US delegates to stand in line to meet a single person from Belfast City Council. You have to think about the size of the room, the group - and if our officers have recommended attendance, we have to take that seriously.”
He said there was “already a display of prudence” in meeting the Great Britain Comhaltas in Belfast, and he said the DUP would support the recommendation to send four council staff with the musicians to New York.
The committee director told councillors the return Drogheda received from Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2019 was “well north of four times the investment.” He said: “We would comfortably expect that Belfast would receive 700,000 to a million visitors because of its connectivity.”
He added: “I would be incredibly confident that the economic return in the city would be, if not the best we have achieved from any of our events, would certainly be amongst the best. That is the anecdotal evidence provided to me from other host places.” He said the profit to the city would be “in the tens of millions.”
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