Ms Jo Mangan:

In response to Senator O'Donnell, it happens because of the hidden subsidy and because most people working in the arts do it regardless of whether they are getting paid. For those of us working in the sector, it always feels that there is that constant expectation. There is not one of us here who has not picked up the telephone to somebody asking us to do something for free. One would never ask a plumber to come over and get in under the sink for a bit of experience. That is something that happens to our sector. It is all wrapped up with respect for what the artist is or who we are.

I will answer the question about being Minister. I would fight and fight and fight. Moreover, I would have information, and the statistics and information we have are solidly interrogated. Occasionally, people ask us whether that information can be real and we can reply that it is. For example, 2.6% of the GDP of the whole of Europe comes from the creative economy. Similarly, the wider sector contributed €4.7 billion in Ireland, not in Europe, with an aggregate employment figure of 78,900. There is a kind of notion that the arts somehow are some sort of elite activity into which some people fall because they are from a middle class background. It could not be further from the truth and Senators Ó Ríordáin and Warfield both alluded to that today. The real point is that when the Minister responsible for culture in Canada got that job, she said it was the best job in the country. We all need that passion and vision to be driven right through this document and to be riven into the centre of government in Ireland.