Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am going to fly through my questions because we could spend hours talking about this fascinating subject. I thank each of the witnesses for the work they do every day to support our cultural and creative economy and I thank them for joining us today.

I agree with expanding the night-time economy and with every word of what Mr. Sharpe said five minutes ago. We urgently need to look at this. Thankfully, the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, and others in Cabinet are now taking this challenge very seriously. We promote ourselves worldwide, quite rightly, as one of the world's leading lights and as a beacon of cultural creativity and fun due to our famous - or infamous, whichever way one looks at it - craic. All of that stops at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., 365 days of the year. That has never made sense to me. In European cities such as Brussels, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and so on, people are allowed the liberty and freedom of engaging in cultural creativity and cultural activity 24-7, which is the way it should be. Let us make that happen to ensure we can see the kind of new ideas and new innovation emerging from people whose function it is to create new ideas and innovation.

Mr. Fitzgerald referred to supplier SMEs. I have consistently made the case to the Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy English, that there is one final cohort of people within this sector that has not been supported. I have been advised very well by the Music & Entertainment Association of Ireland, which has been an excellent advocate for those people, including our musicians and suppliers, who are yet to receive some sort of compensation for their accumulating costs and lack of income. Hopefully, we will see something emerging on that issue quite soon.

I have a few quick questions for IMRO. Again, this is an issue we could discuss for hours. In a world where content creators have a direct line to content consumers and record labels are no longer a necessary intermediary between the two, has any country successfully created an independent streaming platform for its own content creators that effectively channels revenue and income directly to the songwriters who create the content? Has anybody done that successfully and if so, is that something we can emulate? What are the most pressing and necessary reforms of Ireland's copyright legislation that would yield direct and immediate benefits for our songwriters right now? How IMRO charges venues must be examined. The Valuation Office recently re-examined how it approaches the valuation proposition for venues up and down the country. Rather than basing the valuation on a very primitive and, frankly, inaccurate measure of square metres or square footage, it will now base it on the income or turnover of each venue, which is much more fair and sustainable. Those are my questions for IMRO.

I have one question for EPIC. The entertainment sector is now receiving significant funding. How do we ensure that a very large part of that funding trickles down to the content creators, including the musicians and actors who grace the stage and the playwrights who make amazing things happen? How do we ensure that all the supports that have been put in place by the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, who has done an excellent job, trickle down eventually to the people who make things happen in the first place?