Deenihan hopeful Light House cinema will reopen soon

MINISTER FOR Arts Jimmy Deenihan is hopeful the Light House cinema in Smithfield, Dublin, will be reopened and “as soon as possible”.

The Minister said in the Dáil that he had met a delegation of “some of the interested parties” seeking to run the arthouse venue. “A discussion is ongoing and every effort is being made by all parties to try to resolve the issue,” he told Sinn Féin arts spokeswoman Sandra McLellan.

The cinema closed in April after being placed in involuntary liquidation and a receiver was appointed when the tenant could not meet the doubling of the rent from €100,000 to €200,000 a year.

Mr Deenihan said “the receiver is seeking expressions of interest. There are some interested parties and the receiver is following up to ascertain whether this interest is real and to acquire an operator.”

The State had given a €1 million grant towards the fit-out of the cinema, which opened in 2008. This investment was legally protected, allowing the State to either demand repayment or allow another art house or cultural cinema to open for the remainder of the lease until 2013.

Ms McLellan questioned the “absurd” upward-only rent review when the cinema reported “its best box office receipts in the months leading up to its enforced closure”. A lease signed in 2007 for €100,000 “should not be doubled by 2010 in the middle of the worst recession in the history of the State”.

But Mr Deenihan said that from May 2008 when the cinema opened, “the rent was set at nil. In year two, from May 2009, it was set at €100,000” and was to increase by €100,000 each year until the final year of the lease when the rent would be €500,000. The Minister said the owner entered an agreement with the operator “expecting this return” but the operator could not provide the agreed rent “and that is the problem”.

The owner appointed a liquidator and the Department of Arts and other bodies “appointed a receiver to protect the taxpayer’s huge investment in this project”.