NEVER think that it's not worth the effort to make yourselves heard. Sixteen hundred of you responded to the Daily Post's call to save the National Eisteddfod - and that collective voice is still ringing in the ears of Welsh culture minister Alun Pugh. He is an architect of the new financial plan, struck with local authority chiefs from around Wales, to secure the future of the annual festival. Your demand for financial help after last year's debt-troubled event has already saved the day once. And it also played an instrumental role in this week's deal to secure the event over the longer term. The leaders of the 22 local authorities are putting together a £300,000-a-year package of support that will end the system whereby the council where the eisteddfod was taking place shoulders the financial burden. This makes good sense - this is an event for the whole of Wales and the fact that it moves from place to place serves to reinforce its national status. But if individual authorities fear making a loss - or have already have their fingers burned - the danger is that this becomes a moveable feast that no one can afford to host. And it does not come cheap. This year the overall cost of the eisteddfod in Eryri was £3.3m. The 2005 event showed a surplus of £120,000 but in previous years profits were rocked by uncontrollable events such as the foot and mouth crisis in 2001 and appalling weather in St David's in 2003. It is an exciting but risky business and this was the dilemma facing Flintshire, which hopes to stage the event in two years' time,, and that put the future of the eisteddfod in jeopardy. Liverpool's offer to stage the event was a generous one but merely confirmed the belief that something HAD to be done here in Wales to put the eisteddfod's financing and management structure on a firmer footing so there would never be any need to consider taking it over the border. This is why we are equally pleased to see that the financial package is conditional upon an on-going programme of modernisation which will ensure that efficiencies are made and that the eisteddfod's appeal is broadened. In that sense, the greater achievement will be to see many people from Liverpool attending a vibrant, colourful and profitable eisteddfod in Flintshire. | 
