Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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307. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he will liaise with the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to examine the supports for working artists in the social protection system; and if the Government will relax activation rules for working artists to allow them to support themselves as they produce the art and cultural pieces for which Ireland is rightly proud. [37065/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker’s allowance schemes provide income support for people who have lost work and are unable to find alternative full-time employment. The 2016 Estimates for my Department provide for expenditure this year on the jobseekers’ schemes of €2.8 billion.

It is accepted that periods of unemployment are a normal feature of the acting and artistic professions and people in these professions can qualify for a jobseeker’s payment when they are unemployed. Jobseeker’s payments compensate for periods of involuntary unemployment only and it is not the function of my Department to provide income support through the jobseeker’s schemes to any group, including artists during periods of unemployment, which are voluntary.

For this reason, social welfare legislation provides that all jobseekers must satisfy certain qualifying conditions in order to be entitled to an unemployment payment including, being available for full-time work and be genuinely seeking work. All unemployed persons should avail of reasonable employment opportunities and artists are treated no differently to any other unemployed person.

The jobseeker’s allowance scheme can provide income support to artists. For instance artists including self-employed artists who satisfy the scheme’s conditionality and the means test can qualify for a jobseeker’s allowance payment. Artists who are working part time and are categorised as casual jobseeker’s allowance recipients or those who are self-employed and in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance are not currently activated by my Department.

I have had discussions with my colleague the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in relation to supports for working artists and on foot of these our respective officials are in further discussions. The Arts Council, of course, is the main mechanism, through which the Government directs funding to the arts and to artists and the 8% increase in its annual budget will allow the Council to enhance support to artists and arts organisations around the country on both a small and large scale, from locally-based groups to the Abbey Theatre.

It should be noted that in Budget 2017 funding increases across the arts and cultural bodies under the remit of the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs were announced including:

- an extra €5m for the Arts Council - an 8% increase;

- €2m extra for the Film Board;

- an extra €1m for Culture Ireland;

- an additional allocation of €3.5m for the national cultural institutions; and

- a new funding stream of €5m for the implementation of a Culture 2025/Ireland 2016 Legacy Programme.

All of this represents real and substantial funding increases across the arts and cultural area and has been welcomed across the sector. It also re-affirms the commitment of this Government to progressively increase funding for the arts as the economy improves, as set out in the Programme for a Partnership Government.These increases will have a positive and distinct impact on arts and cultural provision around the country, especially for artists and other creative workers.