Ms Karan O'Loughlin:

I wish to address very briefly some of the recent comments. I will start at the end and work backwards. I understand the Arts Council is concerned about the remuneration of artists in funding applications. The problem arises for us when people make funding applications and have all their pieces in a nice row and then the project is 60% funded instead of 100% funded. The immediate hit in that case is on the artist because what was proposed to be paid will no longer be paid and the funding will get rejigged. It is important that the Arts Council be aware of this.

This idea of working for nothing is very prevalent, particularly among younger artists. They get conditioned into it very quickly when they come out of third level education if they are at drama school, film school or whatever else. The language around this is important. I have never come across a line of people who are willing to work for nothing; I have come across people who end up having to work for nothing. There is no queue of people who say they will work for free; there is pressure on people to appear for free because one can get oneself seen, one can have the opportunity to work with a particular director or producer, and there is always a vague promise that that may deliver more for the young person in the future. That is the situation in which they find themselves. In this regard we have developed some good guidelines, which we have on our website, concerning fringe and low-budget productions. Often what happens is when there is very little money, there will be some sort of a share production. What is it called-----