Mr. Rónán Hession:

I will go through a couple of the questions that were raised by Senator Wall. I thank the Senator for his kind remarks about the work of the Department, and also Deputy Ó Cuív, who made kind remarks.

On the task force on arts and culture, Senator Wall asked if the figure was surprisingly low given the size of the sector. There has been work done by the Arts Council. They had a report done by EY which pointed to a higher incidence in terms of the effect. There is probably a number of factors at play. First of all, the €55,000 includes sport and recreation. They are categorised together in terms of nomenclature of economic activities, NACE, codes. Second, approximately half of the arts and culture sector are part time. Some people are part-time workers and they will have either other work or other responsibilities. Musicians, for example, typically will have sources of income other than performance or recording, most obviously teaching. They will teach guitar or piano. There may be some people whose arts income is not the majority share of their income in terms of what they earn from year to year even though they would consider it their primary role. In those cases, it is perhaps that they are classified under education. It means a bit of a deeper dive there. The task force was only in place for six weeks and there was not really an opportunity to dig into the deep statistical context for that. However, that is one possible explanation.

The Senator asked about the State pension. In the budget, the full-year cost of retaining the current pension is €453 million and the cost for next year is €221 million. Clearly, that is significant expenditure which will impact on the Social Insurance Fund, SIF.

The Senator asked about students and their tax status. It is not a matter for our Department. We do not have a deciding influence in terms of the tax treatment of the PUP payment. The issue was raised in the context of the Finance Bill and the amendments that were made to the Finance Act 2018 about the tax treatment and the Revenue Commissioners. That will apply, I would expect, to students in the same way that it will apply to other PUP recipients.

Between the two of us, I hope we have covered the questions. Obviously, we would be happy to take more.