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

I thank the Chairman and the committee for agreeing to my request to have this session and to get EPIC and the National Campaign for the Arts in before the committee. It is hugely important that their voices are heard.

The terrible irony of the current situation is that society has never before needed the arts, music and culture more than it does now to sustain itself in a difficult time. It has now realised the value of the arts, music and culture, even through their absence, because people are missing going to gigs and live events. Their value and importance have been underlined tenfold by the current situation but the arts are facing an existential threat to their existence and all of the people front of stage and behind the scenes are also facing such a threat. The witnesses have made their case fantastically well and I hope the Government listens in terms of how important it is to sustain them all through this situation, however long it lasts.

Many of the economic arguments have been made and I do not want to go over them because the witnesses made them so well. I would like them to talk a little bit about the human impact of all of this on the artists and the people behind the scenes whose livelihood is now threatened in a fundamental way. In some of the Zoom meetings we all attended recently people were pointing out that, pre-Covid, musicians who play in the pubs, such as those in Temple Bar, would have been paid €130 for a two-hour set. As we speak, they are being told they might get €30 for two hours. That is not sustainable and it is incredibly demoralising for those musicians. They need the payment and they need a guarantee now that the pandemic unemployment payment will be maintained until their livelihood can recover. That is just one example I can think of. At the meeting we had online, Bressie spoke about the mental health impacts for people of having mortgages and bills and not knowing what is coming down the line given the current situation. I would like all the contributors to talk about that mental health impact, the anxiety and the human consequences for people front and backstage.

The other area I want to ask about is the role the witnesses envisage for public service broadcasters, the national broadcaster, in all of this. One of the comments made repeatedly at the meetings was that we should have a minimum amount of original domestically produced content on the national broadcaster to encourage original content production, performers and so on here.

Perhaps the witnesses could comment on that demand. I refer also to funds for the production of original content. Could they say a little bit more about payment for online work? That featured quite a lot in the meetings we had.