Ms Orlaith McBride:

We do. In the past when we have assessed applications and felt that the artists were not getting paid enough we have withheld money and we have conditioned funding, especially in the visual arts area. We are currently developing a stated policy. The Senator is absolutely right that we cannot set pay rates for artists, but we can work with resource organisations such as Theatre Forum, Visual Artists Ireland and Dance Ireland to ensure they are very clear around the optimum pay rates for artists. The theatre sector is much more heavily unionised than other sectors and Irish Equity is there to service that purpose. It is not so easy, however, in other art forms and particularly in areas such as visual arts where an individual artist is trying to get his or her work seen in an exhibition or in group shows. We work very closely with Visual Artists Ireland to ensure those artists are paid properly for exhibition fees and when it is brought to our attention that artists are not being paid properly we would often condition funding to different organisations or galleries to ensure that it happens.