Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have a brief supplementary on those. What Ms Donaghy says is important and confirms some of the things I have asked, as have others, on this. Submissions were made to the arts committee at the beginning of last year where the people in receipt of the relief and who are the main beneficiaries and promoters of continuing it gave evidence to the effect that there were 17,000 jobs. We discover now that it is 3,000. The fact that the Department has the figures indicates that it is being taken seriously, but it is a major issue and I hope it is scrutinised seriously. The report confirms that the shadow or full economic cost of the relief was €315 million between 2015 and 2017. That is nearly €80 million a year. The full economic cost is considerably higher than the nominal figure of the relief and the number of jobs generated is far below the number claimed by those in receipt of it.