Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, put in place the music stimulus fund to which the Deputy referred to support artists at this very difficult time. She has the ability to continue the fund into 2021 and I hope those artists who were unsuccessful in gaining access to it thus far may be able to do so later this year or next year.

The other side of the coin the Deputy is referring to is the question of how we fund the kinds of initiatives he is calling for, such as the music stimulus fund, and many of the public services we have and for which the Deputy wants more funding. Ours is a small country in which there is a big contest under way for the type of investment we currently have and to keep that investment in place. An element of that is having personal tax codes that are competitive. The Deputy referred to the group of people who work in very senior roles in very large companies in this country and are very well paid, some of whom, as he mentioned, participate in SARP. Their location here in Ireland and the work they do are part of the reason we have hundreds of thousands of people working in the companies they run. I assure the Deputy that when it comes to the roles we are discussing, we are surrounded by countries that would be very eager to see that work located elsewhere. In that context, I believe the tax code we have gets the balance right between being competitive and being fair. It delivers the kind of fairness of taxation that I referred to a moment ago.

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