Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I know we are digressing from the topic but I wonder whether the arts community itself could play a greater role in ensuring that young people are not willing to work for nothing. If someone is making a funding application to put on a play or shoot a film, for example, the money he or she needs to do it should be factored in properly, rather than the Arts Council reasoning that if it puts in a certain amount of money it might get a certain result and will make it work that way. Rather, the Arts Council should ask what the applicant actually needs for the project and whether it should just put that amount of money in to ensure the person who does the make-up and the person who does the hair, for example, gets paid properly. The arts must be the only sector in the country in which one is expected to work for nothing. It is totally unacceptable.