HAPPY Days Beckett Festival will not take place this year after it lost some of its core funding.

The celebration of playwright Samuel Beckett has been held in Enniskillen for the last four years.

In a statement, Founding Director Sean Doran said “stuff happens” explaining that in the arts “the roller coaster nature of the environment we work within is no secret.”

“But we don’t, and won’t, let setbacks deter us; we know we just have to pick ourselves up and start again. To paraphrase the inimitable Samuel Beckett himself: We can’t go on. We’ll go on,” he said.

The curtain must come down on the international event “due to the loss of one of our core funders.”

“We considered the option of a shorter and smaller festival with the support of our other funders but the festival would have been too pressed financially to reach the standards you have come to expect in the past four years.

"We know this will be disappointing news for our audience who, in the last four years, have come from all over the world to support us, and similarly to our wonderfully committed local audience in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh and throughout Northern Ireland,” said Mr. Doran.

He stated that it has been “an uphill task year on year to sustain an international arts festival to the highest of standards with limited funding in a regional rural location.”

“We would like to reassure our audiences that this announcement is not intended as a cessation. The Board and ourselves will now try to persuade our core funders, and indeed new funders, to help us secure a more stable financial future so that we can resume to deliver these three great festivals west of the Bann; Beckett, Wilde and Friel, in Fermanagh, Tyrone, Derry and Donegal.

“We would like to thank our government funders for their support over these past five years; Tourism Northern Ireland, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, Belfast City Council, Donegal County Council, Derry City Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland whose funding we lost this year but who were a great supporter of our work in our first four years..”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Arts Council for Northern Ireland said: “The Happy Days International Beckett Festival was ineligible for 2016/17 funding by the Arts Council because the organisation did not meet the conditions of the grant awarded the previous year (2015/16).

"The festival organisers were unable to make their records of expenditure for the 2015/16 festival available, consequently just 50 per cent of the full award was paid out.”