Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is a technical motion on one level, but it is, nonetheless, an opportunity to highlight some important issues. We are talking about underspending of €709 million in many areas of capital spending, which is an indication of how significant the impact of Covid-19 has been. We must also add to that figure the roughly €20 billion in additional spending which is also related to the pandemic.

To be honest, this exposes the Government's false narrative concerning its strategy balancing public health with the economy. The truth is that the living with Covid-19 strategy has been a disaster from a public health perspective, which we can see when we look at the number of tragic fatalities.

It has also been a disaster economically because we are caught in a cycle of surge and then lockdown, and the Government has no strategy to get out of that cycle. It is not pursuing the strategy that has been pursued in Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and in many other places where most of the time most of the people are living normally, and where the economic damage is far less. I wanted to underline that.

The area of music, arts and events has been most devastated by this. I have spoken about it many times but it has to be highlighted again. The people in this group have been locked down for the full 357 days of this pandemic. Their livelihoods, like their industry, are absolutely devastated. When we talk about capital investment, it is very important to stress that the greatest capital we have is people. They are the most important capital we have. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of arts, music and cultural events. The people who work in those areas are the capital. To be honest, the Government has abandoned that capital. The creative and imaginative human talent that is at the cornerstone of what this country is and its culture, and the things that have made our lives bearable through this grim and terrible pandemic, have effectively been abandoned.

I will give the House some figures around the musicians. These are possibly new figures from a survey by the Music and Entertainment Association of Ireland, which show that 41% of those surveyed, who are musicians and people in the events and music industry, have had 100% income loss; 24% have had 90% to 99% income loss; 20% have been forced into other employment, which is human capital leaving music; 56% feel they will have to take up other employment and effectively leave; 22% have had to sell the equipment essential to their work; 26% are struggling to pay their mortgage; 31% are struggling to pay loans; 45% struggle to pay their bills; 17% are on the verge of losing their vehicles; 25% receive support from services for mental health problems; and 45% are concerned about their mental health. This is the damage being done to our musicians, our events workers and our artists who have been completely locked down. Many of the grant support schemes such as the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, and the grant announced in the past couple of days continue to exclude the vast majority of these musicians, arts workers and so on. I could add in taxi drivers because they do not happen to have a premises or fit the other criteria for such schemes, but we will talk about them on another day.

There is a €709 million underspend, which is a lot of money because the €10.1 billion will be now €10.8 billion in 2021, as the Taoiseach has said. I am sure that most of it at least goes to important projects but it is interesting that some industries have recorded super profits. Some of them have been getting supports during the pandemic and have been doing well out of the pandemic. The huge numbers of musicians, arts and events workers, however, are devastated and their mental health is on the floor. They are selling the equipment and the vehicles they need to ply their trade, and yet they are excluded from the Covid support schemes. I ask the Minister, that given we have all of this money underspent, to consider a bespoke scheme to support those music, arts and cultural workers who are on their knees and who have been locked down for the entirety of this pandemic so we still have a culture and a music industry when this is over.

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