Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

We are all in favour of interns and people getting experience in the arts but my problem is that they are doing so without getting any money whatsoever. The €50 would basically pay one's travel expenses to and from one's job.

If the Minister is that concerned, why does she not look at what they are doing in Britain, for example? The creative employment programme of the Arts Council of England is designed to support up to 6,500 paid internships to give people real training. What we found in the survey we did of three different websites advertising jobs was 36 internships, which I consider to be a small number out of 52 jobs. There were only 16 normal paid jobs. It is time to stop doing the arts and everything else in this country on the cheap. Many people are now being forced to do three internships and then emigrate without having an arts job at the end of it.

See this speech in context