Ms Jo Mangan:

One of the main reasons why the National Campaign for the Arts, NCFA, exists is to improve the working and living conditions for artists. It is worth bearing in mind that conclusive research has been done about the amount of money the people who work in the arts in this country earn. Over and over again we have come up with staggering figures, for example, the Arts Council uncovered the fact that €7,000 is the average annual income for someone working in the arts for professional artists in Ireland. A total of 76% of visual artists in Ireland earn under €10,000 a year. This is way below poverty thresholds and we do not seem to have grasped the fact that if we want to have a society rather than simply an economy we have to invest in the people who are the creative soul of the country and we have to start mining our natural resources. Our natural resource is our creativity. We are bursting at the seams with it but we have not been taking advantage of it.

There are plenty of examples, such as Scotland, which is similar to Ireland. The median income in the UK, for example, is €15,000 per annum, which is a little bit better than here. In France, there is a sort of dole equivalent which is an interesting model whereby if a person can prove that he or she works between 12 and 18 weeks a year as an artist and is paid, for example, by having an exhibition, being in a film or a play or has written something, that person is entitled for the rest of the time to not starve but to have sufficient income without having to explain her or himself in the dole office. People working in the sector, our colleagues, are constantly embattled in the social welfare system in this country and are questioned and harangued on the basis that there is no such thing as an artist. The status of the artist in this country is very low. We are very much behind the notion of an artists' charter or bill of rights.