Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

The music industry has changed over the years. The revenue from streaming is minuscule so a lot of artists are trying to get their stuff onto the likes of TikTok and are trying to get airplay on radio, where you still get a certain amount of royalties. They usually try to get to a point where they can tour. Touring can be hit and miss for a lot of artists. They do not necessarily make a lot of money. The very successful ones do. That is why the previous Government's introduction of the stipend for artists was so beneficial. We hope that will continue. This is a long-winded way of saying that, while some people may occasionally hit pay dirt and get some of their works licensed, if you are a contributor to someone else's work, your income is going to vary from year to year and will often be quite low. If you want a bring a dispute to court, even the hourly cost for a solicitor is quite onerous. You are talking about €200 or €300 multiplied by the number of hours. It is not worth it to fork out €1,000 or €2,000 on a case that might only be worth €4,000 or €5,000 to you. The principle of justice remains, however. That is why having it sorted out outside the courts would have been cheaper and more efficient. While we hope there will not be many cases, where they do arise, they are going to be quite onerous. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, people are going to have deeper pockets. The people who are trying to scrape a living will not be able to sort out their grievances if the 50-50 split is not as it should be.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21