Departmental Offices
Dail Éireann — 2021-07-13
============================================================

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

The unit is supposed to assist in giving legislative effect to programme for Government plans. One of the aspects of the programme for Government the Taoiseach has repeatedly stressed is that he would support those sectors that have been impacted particularly harshly by public health measures. One of the sectors that I have mentioned many times is that comprising musicians, live performers, entertainers and so on. It appears that if they benefit from the live performance support scheme, LPSS, and do one or two gigs, they cannot go back on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and they are effectively forced to be jobseekers. The latter is despite the fact that their sector has not reopened. There is no plan, even with the reopening of hospitality, for it to fully reopen. It is grossly unfair that musicians, entertainers and live performers are being pushed over a PUP cliff when they do some work on a pilot scheme, particularly when that is an isolated bit of work for them.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-07-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-07-13