Constance Keane is an exile from Ireland. The musician, who goes by the name Fears, has been living in London on and off for two years now. Why? Because it just does not pay to be a musician in Ireland. Or any artist for that matter. 

Keane is a rising star who hails from Shankill in Co Dublin. This year, she released her debut album Oíche, and as well as a new EP as a member of M(h)aol, an Irish band based in the UK. She said none of this success could be achieved if she lived in her home country, though.

“I felt like I had to move. It’s not something I particularly want to do,” said Keane. 

While living in Ireland, Keane was unable to focus on creating her music for several reasons. Firstly, if she focused only on being a musician, she couldn’t pay for necessities like rent. Secondly, if she got a side job, which often wouldn’t relate to her chosen profession, it soaked up time that could have been used to develop her musical career. 

“Art takes time. Art is always going to take time. And if you have to have a job that you’re not passionate about from Monday to Friday, you’re taking time away from your creative process,” said Keane.

Working another job also means you end up with no downtime. “If you’re a touring musician, you end up having to take annual leave to go on tour. But touring is work. So you end up actually having no holidays.”

“There have been numerous times where I’ve had to turn opportunities down because I didn’t have the time to do them or the flexibility to be able to go and play shows because I’m tied into a job that I need to pay my rent and that actually has nothing to do with the work that I create,” she added.

It is easy to say “we’ve all been there”. We have all worked side hustles while in school or college to pay for necessities like food and shelter. For the vast majority of us, however, there has always been an end in sight and eventually, we would be able to invest all our time into what we really want to do. This is not the case for Keane however, and many others in her shoes. 

Throughout her career as a musician, Keane has worked many jobs. These include being an employee of a kayak company, front of staff at a theatre, and a waitress. She ultimately decided to emigrate to the UK where she knew that if she had to work a second job, at least it would be in the industry she wanted to work in. So, while living in London, she co-founded the record label TULLE while working on her music as Fears and with M(h)aol.

Keane’s goal is to move back to Ireland someday. “I find Ireland an incredibly inspirational place to do my work in. It is a place where I feel comfortable. I feel at home. And I would like to be able to live close to my family again. It’s just not feasible at the moment for me with the way that things are,” she said. 

For her to be enticed home, there needs to be a universal basic income (UBI) introduced, she tells The Currency.

“I think bringing something like that in is a mark of respect and a mark of appreciation for artists and that recognises that we actually do contribute so much to Irish culture. I think that Ireland is a country that makes a lot of its international credibility off of the arts, but isn’t great at actually supporting artists on the ground,” said Keane. 

A plan in motion

Keane’s story is not an outlier, according to chair of the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA) Angela Dorgan. This is why her organisation has been lobbying the government heavily for the past five years to introduce a UIB. Now it looks like it’s finally happening. 

The UBI has been part of the agenda for government since it featured in the National Economic Recovery Plan. The Government has stated it intends to launch a three-year pilot UBI programme. The upcoming budget is the perfect platform to announce this scheme and many are anticipating it, including arts workers. 

For a number of reasons, Dorgan believes artists and arts workers are prime candidates for the pilot. 

“One reason is the precariousness of working and living in that industry and the mental health and wellbeing implications that come from that. The second would be that the consistent Theatre Forum reports have stated that people working in the arts are earning between €10,000 to €12,000. That’s the poverty line. The third reason is that those in music, literature, and visual art work for free in preparation for an album, or a tour, or a series of paintings, or a book,” said Dorgan. 

Minister for the arts Catherine Martin has been pushing a UBI pilot for arts workers since it was backed by her Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce last year. Arts workers are seen as some of the most vulnerable workers in society due to the small amount they earn from their craft alone, plus having to pay high costs like rent. 

“We think that a trial in the arts sector, if successful, could then be used for stuff like fisheries, small farming, and other careers where employee income would vary throughout the year,” said Dorgan.

A survey carried out by the NCFA last year showed that 72 per cent of artists working in Ireland were earning less than the national minimum wage before Covid-19 hit.

“I know this first-hand from my clients on my own accounting books, they might earn between €15,000 to €18,000 a year,” chartered accountant and actor with Druid theatre group Peter Daly told The Currency. These figures are not much off Theatre Forum’s estimations.

So, how exactly will a UBI pilot for arts workers work? 

Show me the money

The NCFA has suggested that the UBI pilot for arts workers should provide approximately €327 a week, which is what was recommended by the task force. A three-year trial of this would cost approximately over €27 million. This UBI payment plus money earned from working in the arts will then be taxed at 40 per cent. 

However, another group, Social Justice Ireland, also campaigning for UBI proposes that whoever the individuals involved in the pilot are should receive €203 a week, which was the Pandemic Unemployment Payment rate. The reason given for this figure is that it would be easier for the taxpayer to fund. 

“It might be the government’s view that artists should get more than €203 a week because of their situation. It’s always possible to pay people a basic income of €203 and pay a top payment for artists such as €122,” said CEO of Social Justice Ireland Dr Séan Healy, who has been campaigning for UBI for decades. 

In a statement to The Currency, the Department for Arts and Culture wrote that Minister Catherine Martin is expected to make a proposal for a Basic Income Guarantee pilot as part of the Budget 2022 discussions, after which further details will be available on how the pilot scheme will be progressed. The basic income initiative will be different from the Working Age Payment which is a separate policy discussion and is a matter for the Minister for Social Protection.  “There are no plans at present to amalgamate the two proposals,” a spokesperson for the department stated.

The NCFA is clear that this payment should not be means-tested or looked at as a social welfare payment and therefore should fall under Revenue’s remit. This is also backed by Social Justice Ireland as it is their stance that if it is provided through social welfare, then it may skew payments for those who are vulnerable in society and are already getting welfare payments, such as people with disabilities.

“There has been some talk of providing a type of UBI by adjusting one of the welfare payments that already exists. That wouldn’t be a good idea at all,” said Healy. 

Doing it through the tax system provides clarity on who will qualify for the pilot as Revenue already has its own classifications for who is an artist, as it provides an artists’ exemption from income tax. 

“If the Government was going to pilot this for artists, there would be no difficulty about that. There is already a mechanism in the tax that identifies artists. Therefore, it is possible to pilot a basic income for artists if that is what the government wants to do,” said Healy.

Obviously, if the scheme is successful after its three-year trial, then it will be available to everyone from the everyday arts worker to Bono. But for the pilot, it will just be down to who is lucky out of 55,000 arts workers. Firstly, Revenue will narrow down who it classifies as an arts worker, then it will be a lottery. 

“We think that’s the only fair way to do it rather than it being an application. There would be thousands and thousands of people that would express interest. And we would be expecting a big chunk of the 55,000 people who work in the sector to want to be a part of it,” said Dorgan.

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One common misconception, according to both the NCFA and Social Justice Ireland is that introducing a UBI will lead to a fall in people wanting to work. They have found that all the research around UBIs suggests the opposite of this. 

“Studies all over the world show that a UBI begins to pay for itself because productivity goes up. When artists can just spend time on their art and not have to go for other jobs, a smaller job just to keep bread on the table, their productivity and output go up,” said Dorgan.

A UBI pilot is viewed as a sure thing to appear in this year’s Budget by many, especially those working in the arts. The details of how much it will cost and how it will be delivered still remain somewhat unclear. For now, we just have to wait for the curtain to rise.