Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Engaging with the artists shows how essential that basic income is. This was the number one recommendation that came from the artists themselves through the arts and culture recovery task force. I was absolutely delighted to secure agreement within the Government on that. I secured €25 million in budget 2022 to launch this three-year basic income for arts pilot scheme.

The stakeholder engagement has been absolutely core. We had the stakeholder forum in December followed by public consultation. There were well over 1,000 pieces of feedback into that public consultation. As I said, we received a significant number of submissions. That reflects the high level of interest, which the Deputy talked about, in this key policy intervention.

The scheme will be open to practising and developing artists and creative arts workers. It will be non-competitive. Therefore, once a person satisfies the eligibility criteria, he or she will be included in a randomised selection process. The eligibility criteria will be published as part of the scheme launch, which I hope to do in the coming weeks. We are nearly there. It was essential that the artists had to feed into this and help to shape it. I expect the launch in the coming weeks. We are now down to the final details of the number of recipients and the rate of payment. We are trying to finalise that right now. Of course, issues around artists with disabilities have been raised so we must give serious consideration to ensuring this is addressed.

It is my intention that the basic income for arts will be an unconditional basic regular income to artists and creative arts workers to allow them to focus on what they need to focus on. The recipients can do that when they are in receipt of this grant. It will be groundbreaking. There will be a control group as well and we will be assessing the scheme. Research will be done throughout the programme on its impact on creative output and well-being. It will be a thorough research project for three years.