Mr. David Kavanagh:

I will speak first and my colleagues can correct me when I get it wrong. The point about life as an artist is that there are no barriers to a career as an artist. Any citizen of this country who says they are an artist is an artist and is entitled to have a go. That is fantastic and we should encourage it in every way we can. However, there is a difference between a person who has a go for pleasure and a person who tries to make a living out of it. The business of making a living out of it is that one creates copyright material that one sells and tries to have an income. It is not as hard as it sounds to make a separation between the committed citizen who enjoys making art and should not only be allowed but encouraged and facilitated in every possible way and the professional artist who wants to make a lifetime career out of it. Drawing the precise line between the two is not as difficult as it sounds so I do not think that this is a barrier to the idea of coming up with legislation that protects the professional artist.

In respect of the size and volume of what we do and the fact that there is so much of it, it is possible to put numbers on it. Two studies, one by Indecon for the Arts Council and the other by Ernst & Young for the EU, looked at the value of the creative industries. They concur about the value of the industry in Ireland and suggest that the creative industries in Ireland drawn fairly widely turn over at least €5 billion and employ at least 55,000 people in Ireland. However, by extension, they also imply that there is a great deal more room for growth. We are doing well but we could do much better with better legislative and policy structures and more commitment. The creative energy, skills and capacity are there. It is the legislative and policy structures and, I am afraid, the basic investment by the State that are absent. If these could be put in place, we could do not just as well as we are doing but much better.