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

On the day that is in it, it might be worth paraphrasing Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Ulysses when he famously said, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Covid-19 was certainly a nightmare from which we are all trying to awake. One of the great things about Ulysses, of which I am a big fan, is that Joyce takes as his characters the ordinary people, whereas in all previous literature of the 19th century, in novels and so on, it was the aristocrats, elites and upper middle classes. Joyce takes a hammer to that. In the opening chapter, Joyce brilliantly describes the art he wants to make as being "the cracked lookingglass of a servant," in other words, smashing the normal mirror we put up to ourselves, which does not actually give expression to the ordinary working people and making their voices heard. Of course, the servants, downtrodden, oppressed and minorities feature as central characters in Ulysses.

That is exactly what happened during Covid-19 and we need to remember the lessons. I want to shout out that we will remember those lessons for the musicians who live precarious, often impoverished lives, but who enrich our society no end. Just because Covid is over does not mean the need for a renewed support for musicians is over. They are asking that some of the supports will be maintained and that we recognise going forward that we will give them those additional supports to truly value our artists, musicians and so on.

The Minister of State might take note that some individual musicians, taxi drivers and so on were refused the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, on the grounds that they had not made certain PRSI contributions. When some of them checked into that fact, they got it rectified because they were not properly awarded the PRSI contributions they should have been while they were receiving the PUP. It seems that may be quite a widespread administrative mistake. I would like the Minister of State to look into that and rectify it in order that people who should have been getting the PUP, particularly over the Christmas months and weeks, will actually be awarded the backdated PUP they deserve.

See this speech in context