Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

With respect, with regard to pre-Covid earnings, what people working in the live events sector would be earning now as we approach the end of the summer and the festival season is very different from what they would have been earning in February. I want to give the Minister a snapshot as a case study. Electric Picnic, which would be on around this time if it had been able to go ahead, is worth €6.5 million to Stradbally, €20 million to County Laois as and €36 million to the country as a whole. In the absence of appropriate funding for this sector, is the Minister confident that these events will be able to go ahead next year given that this was a hard-fought live industry? Potentially, events will go ahead next year but if we are forcing people working in the industry to seek other forms of employment and they move out of it, we will have to bring in stage managers and event organisers from overseas and that value will be lost to our economy.

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