Mr. Conor Falvey:

Again, the decisions taken by the Arts Council in respect of funding in the early phases of the Covid response were on sustaining venues and organisations - the infrastructure - so that when Covid passes, that infrastructure still will be there to support artists in presenting their work. More recently, the additional funding that has now become available is partly a response to the needs of the freelance sector, which perhaps were not addressed. The response to the freelance sector initially primarily was through the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. The idea of providing additional bursaries and commissions through the Arts Council is to provide people with support to make work, rather than to leave them in a situation where they are entirely reliant on PUP.