Mr. David Kavanagh:

In money terms, a screenwriter in Ireland will earn an average of approximately €10,340 per annum. The average income of a screenwriter in the European Union is still very low but is €22,000. Of that, approximately 20% comes from the ongoing sale of their copyright. When a cable television company takes a signal from a broadcaster, it makes a payment for the creative work it has purchased to retransmit. With cable retransmission, the company makes ongoing payments to creators and there are a wide variety of other opportunities, the essence of the system being that the creator of the copyright shares in the economic life of what they have created and is paid in various ways through the economic life of what they have produced. This does not only generate cash but does so into the future and stabilises the income of artists over the long term, which can be extremely helpful on account of the unstable life most artists have in the original "gig" economy, where they have one contract and have no idea whether they will ever have another contract. It is a very positive thing that they can have some hope of a stable income into the future.