The Arts Council has introduced a new 'begging' system to help allocate funding for the traditional Irish arts in an effort to cope with a deluge of applications. Every year there has been an increase in applications to the Arts Council for funding for festivals, concerts and recordings, leading to delays in the assessing of applications. However, with this new 'begging' system, they hope to cut the assessing time in half. The new begging system will involve applicants having