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

Global Ireland: Ireland's Global Footprint to 2025 puts much emphasis on our culture, arts and heritage but most of its initiatives are essentially about punting our reputation around the world. I am not saying there is anything wrong with them but we are not doing what we should be doing, which is to nurture and support those who produce the art, literature, music, film and so on.

We have been talking about wage rates in this country. The two lowest earning sectors in our economy comprise retail workers and arts workers. They endure miserably low pay and most have no job security because they have episodic employment. In many cases they live in poverty. It is interesting that both of those groups were the worst hit during Covid-19 but we needed them most. We do not give the support to the people in arts and culture, although we are quite happy to punt our reputation around the world. We spend one sixth of the EU average on arts and culture in this country and there has been no real significant increase lately. There was a little increase during the Covid-19 pandemic but it is not anything to the level we see elsewhere.

Let us match words with deeds if we want to support our fantastic and rich heritage and the creative talent that exists in the country. Let us give those people decent incomes and employment security. We should end the scandal in the film industry where nobody has a job but we spend hundreds of millions of euro there every year. Performers do not get royalties because they are forced onto buyout contracts when they work on films and television productions. Let us match the words about culture with deeds to support the artists, technicians and performers in arts and culture.

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