Ms Orlaith McBride:

I wish to respond to the matter Deputy Corcoran Kennedy raised regarding the remuneration of artists. The Arts Council has prioritised this in our strategy. Often, when applications come in to us and our arts managers go through each application forensically and line by line, if artists are not being paid properly it will be flagged as part of the assessment process. It might be that the funding is actually conditional on the applicants' revisiting the artists' fees.