Ms Siobhán Bourke:

It is hard to know why people do not connect and speak up. Ms Daly and I have been working on this since 2017 when the Department invited us to lead on the initiative in association with the Arts Council. We have had fabulous meetings that were very well-attended, but the gender breakdown was mostly women. That might be one issue - the need to bring men to the table. I will make some comments on traditional arts, although my area is theatre or television drama rather than traditional arts. In traditional arts, Dr. Úna Monaghan did an amazing study entitled "121 Stories: the impact of gender on participation in Irish traditional music". In that she talks about gender in traditional arts and she makes a very strong case that one's success is based on one's gender. To go back to the point Ms Daly made earlier, these issues are very deep and systemic, and we have to address them in many ways. That is why the equality legislation is probably the way in. It will just take time.

Combine that with the lack of awareness. A lot of the time people do not realise that their behaviour is off; they do not understand that. People might say there is no excuse for that in today's world and that people should know, but often people honestly do not know and do not realise that their behaviour is not appropriate. Sometimes when people are what we call key talent, leaders or stars there can be a sense that it is way people work, and perhaps there is a realisation that they need to go back and do training. In other areas of work there would be training. One would be required to do training in terms of work practices. It ties back to something that Ms Traynor said earlier. There is no well-developed HR system in the arts. Very few organisations have HR. According to my figures, an extraordinary number of people are in precarious work because they are freelancers. Some 78% of those working in the performing arts in 2019 were in precarious jobs. That is a massive figure. That, alone, is another of the big problems that have to be examined. There is a lack of security, with everybody being precarious and everybody going from one job to the next. That is why the basic income for the arts is very important. There is an important sense of security when people know there is going to be some money there, whereby if I go for a job and feel I am going to meet somebody with whom I have had negative or harmful experience in the past, I could pass that job and not take it on.