Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is an education listening to the witnesses. Somebody mentioned an aspirational investment of 0.3% of GDP. That is something like what Apple has paid in tax in the last few years. Over the last eight years, everybody will agree, expression and creativity has suffered dramatically because of austerity. Obviously, many other things have suffered as well. If one thing comes out of this, and I am just an observer today, we could put in our Constitution that a percentage of our GDP - 0.3%, or even more - is set aside for creativity and the arts, for people to express themselves, because it is so important.

I have been here six months and I think one of the reasons we got into this muddle of austerity is that the Government has tried to make us live in an economy rather than a society. It is so important that working people have a way of expressing themselves, through art, painting, dancing or something else. It is a beautiful form of expression that human beings have, but if it is down to funding, we are just paying lip-service to that. I have been hearing that Ireland has become the sick man of Europe when it comes to the arts. Hopefully, I am wrong on that. That is terrible, because many artists are struggling. People are trying to make a living out of it and they are struggling. Sometimes it is difficult for people to be creative when they are struggling. Individuals can occasionally be creative when they are struggling. However, sometimes when they are struggling all the time it is not good. Hopefully, if we can make progress on this matter, we will put in place something which states that we must spend 0.3% on the arts to facilitate creativity.