Funding of €5 million has been announced for new partnership projects between cultural organisations in Ireland and the UK.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the funding for 12 new projects is part of the UK-Ireland 2030 programme.
He was speaking at a reception in Cork this evening attended by the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to celebrate cultural ties between Ireland and the UK.
Mr Martin said the projects being supported include co-productions in theatre and music, shared research on material held in national archives and national libraries, and the organisation of shared exhibitions in visual art.
He added that there is also a shared initiative to support access to cultural venues by people with disabilities across Ireland and the UK.
Mr Starmer, who spent the earlier part of the day in Belfast, will be in the county for just under 24 hours for the second UK-Ireland Summit following an inaugural gathering in Liverpool last March.
At last year's summit, Mr Martin and Mr Starmer committed themselves to a programme of co-operation between the two countries, called UK-Ireland 2030.
The programme involves closer working relationships across trade, energy, maritime security, emergency planning and cultural connections.
This summit, over today and tomorrow, will take stock on progress to date, as well as setting further goals for the rest of the year and on to 2030.
A two-hour plenary meeting, involving Mr Martin, Mr Starmer and senior Irish and British ministers, will take place tomorrow morning.
Speaking to attendees at an event with business leaders in Co Cork, Mr Martin said he hopes the summit will help "create great opportunities for economic growth".
The UK is Ireland's second largest trading partner and over the past decade annual bilateral trade has increased by 107% to €129 billion.
Ireland is the UK's sixth largest trading partner, while Irish companies employ in the region of 150,000 people in the UK.
The Taoiseach described Ireland's relationship with the UK as "one of our most important".
"I think the purpose of these annual summits is to harness that relationship to grow even more and create great opportunities for economic growth," he said.
Mr Starmer said both countries had "intertwined" economies, adding "we are neighbours, shared history, shared values, but also great trading partners, with trade flows of about €2 billion every week".
UK govt to coordinate response to energy crisis - Starmer
Mr Starmer said earlier that his government is looking to coordinate its response to the energy crisis in Northern Ireland, particularly rising home heating oil prices.
However he did not outline any new measures to address the issue.
Speaking to media at the Atlas Community Centre in Lisburn, Mr Starmer said the treasury minister "is going to coordinate with the (Northern Ireland) executive to see what we can do, because, of course, we need to react as quickly and as appropriately as possible in relation to this".
He also reiterated his commitment to "clamp down on any examples of people being ripped off" in terms of how much they are paying for home heating oil and promised to crack down on companies in Northern Ireland "profiteering" from the fuel crisis triggered by the war in the Middle East.
Almost two thirds of households in Northern Ireland rely on home heating oil.
After party leaders met Mr Starmer this morning in Belfast, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the prime minister had "raised expectations by visiting" Northern Ireland that he would announce "an intervention to assist families that are struggling so badly".
She said the prime minister "framed his visit in respect of cost of living pressures and specifically the price gouging, but also the runaway cost of home heating oil".
"He needs to come up with an answer for families all across the north and I fully expect, and we've made this plain to him, that he will have something constructive and meaningful to say in that regard," she said.
Ms McDonald said they "didn't get an announcement or any form of detail from the British prime minister" and they did not "get any direct assurance".
However Ms McDonald said Mr Starmer has been "left in no doubt what the expectations are".
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While no new interventions were announced, Mr Starmer said a fund of £81million (€93 million) to support electricity consumers in Northern Ireland "was there" and they needed to "work with others ... to translate that into money off bills here in Northern Ireland, particularly for those who've got oil-based heating".
Within the Assembly, there is some disagreement over how the fund can be used to support people impacted by the current crisis.
In a statement issued yesterday, Sinn Féin Minister for the Economy of Northern Ireland Caoimhe Archibald said the funding was to be spent over three years and "cannot make its way to consumers until the Westminster Parliament amends the Energy Prices Act 2022".
But DUP leader Gavin Robinson said there was "a refusal" on the part of Ms Archibald "to accept that resource will be available to protect people in Northern Ireland".
Mr Starmer said the issue had formed the basis of many of the discussions he had with party leaders this morning.
"I'm not going to get drawn into who's right who's wrong because I think for people who are worried about their bills, I think they'd be saying, just get on, work with others and make sure it does translate into money off my bills," he said.
After the meeting with Mr Starmer, Mr Robinson said he had asked the prime minister about making the Crisis and Resilience Fund, which is currently only available to councils in England, available in Northern Ireland.
