The Green Party has told Gript that the €72 million Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) scheme is “cost neutral” to the State because many recipients would otherwise enter the social welfare system.
Speaking during an exchange on the Leinster House Plinth this week, Green Party Senator Malcolm Noonan said that without the payment, participants would be forced to seek jobseekers allowance.
“There’s no doubt that [the scheme] was working very well,” Noonan said.
“It was cost-neutral largely to the exchequer, and it was actually providing an economic gain to local towns and local communities.”
The Senator said that the 2,000 participants in the pilot scheme are currently facing a “cliff edge” as the programme concludes.
“When I say it’s cost-neutral, I’m saying that these 2,000 participants will now have to go back into the social welfare system,” Noonan said.
“Many of them will have to go back into the social welfare system and seek jobseekers allowance and have a decline in their income, plus not being able to contribute positively with their creative output.”
Noonan said that today, artists are being offered information on social welfare entitlements and “counselling psychotherapy services” as the pilot ends.
“Jobseekers allowance is means-tested and will require them to give up their practice,” he said.
“And added to this, no energy credits and a Residential Tenancies Act that will see their rents rise.”
The Senator said the movement for Universal Basic Income had been “hardwired” into Green Party policy for many decades.
He described the policy as being about eliminating the stigma of social welfare and ensuring people have the dignity to create, farm, or pursue “communitarian” causes.
“It is about eliminating stigma of social welfare, levelling the playing field, and strengthening emotional wellbeing,” Noonan said.
“Ensuring that people have the freedom and the dignity to create, to make, to farm, or to do whatever productive work they wish to pursue towards a communitarian common cause – to make stuff, to do things that we need to embed resilience in an era of climate breakdown.”
Noonan suggested that the scheme could eventually be expanded to include other sectors beyond the arts.
“So what we’re saying is not just for the arts, but actually other sectors where there are farmers in our uplands,” he said.
“They’re marginal farmers, there are fishers who are going to suffer from the cuts to the fishery quotas that could benefit from such a scheme.”
Gript asked if Universal Basic Income did not essentially amount to free money being given to everyone in the State regardless of what they do.
Noonan denied that it was “free money”, but said that the “thrust” of the assessment was broadly correct.
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman TD also defended the scheme against concerns regarding sustainability and potential abuse.
Speaking on the Plinth, the Green Party Minister said that analysis of the pilot demonstrated that a moral hazard had not been created.
“I think the analysis of the scheme has demonstrated that that hasn’t happened,” O’Gorman said.
“The analysis of the scheme has actually demonstrated that it’s allowed the artists who have been beneficiaries to actually increase their level of input.”
The real net fiscal cost of the BIA pilot over the period 2021 to 2025 was just under €72 million, according to figures from the Department of Arts.
The project was initially rolled out under former Arts Minister Catherine Martin, who has since lost her Dáil seat and left office.
Notably, Arts Minister Patrick O’Donovan has confirmed to Gript that artists in receipt of basic income money are selected “randomly”, regardless of the quality of their work.