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

As I said, I genuinely welcome this pilot. It is a step forward. It is a pity it took a pandemic for us to realise just how important culture and arts are to us and how life is so much diminished when those in the sector are not able to perform live and so on. I hope we have learned something from the pandemic in this regard. While I welcome the scheme, does the fact that it is for three years mean that we cannot expand it before those three years are up? Perhaps the Minister could clarify that. I would hate to think that this would become a substitute for much more thorough reform of the sector and increased investment to tackle the more general problem, which is the lack of overall investment in permanent infrastructure in arts, music and culture and the jobs that go with that infrastructure. I always contrast our situation with that of Germany. Virtually every village in Germany has a theatre with a full complement of performers, artists and crew who are securely employed. A great many of our artists and culture workers lack that security. That is what we should be aiming towards.

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