The Government’s ‘Basic Income Scheme for artists’ – a.k.a. the Arts Dole – is set to become permanent, and you’re paying.
To date it has been a years-long “pilot scheme” just trying it out – now it’s about to become a long-term fixture in the annual Budget.
As reported by RTÉ:
“The Basic Income for the Arts scheme will be put on a permanent footing in the Budget tomorrow.
The scheme is currently a pilot project. It pays 2,000 artists a basis income of €325 per week.
At this juncture it should be noted that €325 per week multiplied by 2,000 recipients is €650,000 per week, or €33.8 million per year, all courtesy of the Irish taxpayer. The Government also plans to expand the scheme to cover more artistic disciplines, which will no doubt push that figure even higher:
Note that when they say permanent, they mean permanent: when you bring in a measure like this, it’s almost impossible to get rid of, because people come to rely on it and expect it. If the Government, 5 years from now, tried to revoke such a measure, they’d be hit with headline after headline about how they’re “attacking the arts” and forcing artists into starvation. They are painting themselves into a corner where they’re giving something that can’t be taken back without enormous backlash and political will. And if it ever does have to be cut due to, say, an economic downturn, they’ve just put an albatross around their own necks.
On Budget Day, this massive expense will be justified to the public on the basis that a “public consultation” was done on whether to extend the scheme, which, we are told, was overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, Arts Minister Patrick O’Donovan is already bragging about the positive response:
There are a few problems with this of course.
Firstly, the majority of respondents were self-described artists or arts organisations. 54% self-identified as a person involved in the arts themselves. So in essence, the Government asked artists, “Do you want us to give you free money every week?”, and the artists said “Yeah.” Shocking.
Secondly, we’re allegedly to believe that 44.73% of respondents were random members of the public who had no personal stake in the matter, and who just really love the arts.
Of course, there’s no way to know if that’s true or not, because the consultation was based entirely on self-reporting. So when it says that a large chunk were ordinary members of the public, there is no way to verify that, and the Department is not interested in trying to verify it. They simply do not care. For all we know, those were artists filling it out multiple times and lying, or the relatives and friends of artists filling it out on their boyfriend/girlfriend/child’s behalf. There’s no way of knowing, and the Government doesn’t care, because they designed the system to be as sloppy as it is.
None of this is to say arts don’t matter. They do. But if you insist this is a neutral, evidence-led success story, then show the evidence that isn’t produced by, or polled among, the beneficiaries. Don’t cite an unverified open-link survey as if it were a nationally representative sample, and then place it on the scales opposite housing, health, policing, or carers. If the claim is that BIA delivers net benefits to society, then give us independent cost-benefit analysis, published in full, methods and all, and have it torn apart in public. Not this thinly-veiled chicanery.
More importantly, this is the same Department that blatantly ignored their own public consultation on the National Misinformation Strategy, which was 93% negative.
Irish Govt ignored public consultation on misinformation
When I asked Minister Patrick O’Donovan why he ignored that consultation, he defended the decision to reject the public’s opinions, saying that fighting misinformation is important.
But when a consultation goes the way he and the Government wants, he parades it around like it’s some huge mandate and achievement. They do this constantly, and they can’t keep getting away with it.
The Government is now using this sham, potemkin village process to justify giving tens of millions of euros of your money out to other people, because they can’t just defend policies on their own merits. And note that Fine Gael are about to break their election promise to give workers tax cuts which they made just last year – they can’t give you a tax break, but they can give your money to failing artists.
These are insulting, underhanded tactics that should be called out at every available opportunity.