Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In relation to the Deputy's specific question around legislation in this area, it will be in the context of the sharing of royalty payments between producers and performers of recorded music. I recently sought and received Government approval to address this matter by amending the primary copyright legislation. Accordingly, drafting will proceed on the relevant Bill shortly.

As the Deputy said, the committee of which he is a member, on the basis of his ask, has done quite an amount of work on this. In January, recommendations were published in relation to section 481 tax credits. The committee's report on this was published earlier in the week. The report's recommendations cut across, as the Deputy acknowledged, a number of different Departments. As a result, cross-departmental co-operation is going to be required.

I understand that the relevant forum met in February. It consisted of a mix of plenary and break-out sessions to discuss the tax-credit issue and copyright issue at length. I expect that learnings from the forum will inform the policy considerations on this going forward.

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