Overview of the Basic Income for the Arts in Ireland pilot
Original image credit - Magdalena Smolnicka
Overview of the Basic Income for the Arts in Ireland pilot
In September 2020, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin set up the Arts and Culture Taskforce which was tasked with producing a report on how the arts and culture sector could adapt and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time she was also the deputy leader of the Green Party which is supportive of the Basic Income (BI) concept.
The number one recommendation from the taskforce report Life Worth Living was to pilot a Basic Income scheme for a 3-year period in the in the arts, culture, audio-visual and live performance and events sectors.
As part of the National Economic Recovery Plan launched on 1 June 2021, Minister Martin secured a commitment from Government for a Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) Pilot Scheme.
Throughout 2021, the Department engaged in a policy development process which involved discussions with the Life Worth Living Oversight Group, engaging with sectoral stakeholders, convening an inter-departmental working group to assess challenges, and reviewing international research and best practice. The Department used this work to inform its proposal for a pilot.
The Department held a stakeholder forum on 15 December 2021, where over 150 participants, including artists,arts-workers and representative bodies, discussed the proposal. A public consultation took place throughout the month of January 2022. Potential participants had the opportunity to see and discuss the types of questions which would be asked in the pilot scheme surveys.
The pilot began in September 2022 and was due to end in August 2025. In the election of November 2024 the Minister lost her seat in the Irish Parliament and the Green Party lost most of its seats and is no longer in government. In June 2025 the new Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O'Donovan , from the Fine Gael party, secured Government approval to extend the Pilot for 6 months until February 2026.
The BIA pilot launched in the spring of 2022. Over 8,200 eligible applications were received. Among the applicants 2000 recipients for the BI and 1000 members of a control group were randomly (by chance) selected. The study design with two groups was done in order to conduct a social scientific experiment comparing the findings between the intervention and the control groups. The initial payments were issued to artists and creative arts workers in October of the same year (backdated to August 2022, which was the date of selection).
The 2000 BIA recipients received a weekly unconditional income of €325. The participants of the control group received €650 per year in recognition of the time taken to complete two surveys per year. The BIA payment was reckonable income for the purposes of tax and social protection payments and was treated as earnings from self-employment.
The Department has published five evaluation reports to date: Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme: Reports
The findings are very positive and encouraging. This was also confirmed in a Department press release: Basic Income for the Arts pilot produced over €100 million in Social and Economic Benefits
The Department also organised a public consultation on the BIA scheme. 97% of the responses supported making the scheme permanent. However, nearly half of the respondents thought that payments should be based on need. Asked how long people should receive BIA for, about half said that it should be for five years or less. You can read the press release with the results here.
In advance of budget announcements in October, several stakeholders expressed their call for making the BIA permanent and extensive. The National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA) stated on their website:
The final report into the impact of Basic Income for the Arts shows that working in the Arts in Ireland pushes many into financial precarity, and even poverty. There should be no barrier to beginning a family, or a pension, or even an appointment with a dentist. In October 2023 over 50% of people in the control group who were not getting Basic Income were struggling to afford basic things like food, clothes and heating where in the general population, it was 17%.
For the NCFA this moment is a considerable call to action; we have unequivocal evidence now that adopting this scheme and expanding it to include a larger group at a rate of at least €325 per week is essential. We need your help to make sure that Basic Income for the Arts becomes a reality and isn't relegated to the graveyard of pilot schemes.
Let us stand together in support of our artists and arts workers by urging policymakers in Ireland to retain, extend and expand Basic Income for The Arts.’
Three writers (a poet, a novelist, and a non-fiction writer), and a visual artist, were interviewed about their experiences as participants on the BIA pilot scheme in The Stinging Fly: Basic Income for the Arts: What happens next? An Irish writer wrote about her positive experience ‘The basic income scheme for the arts changed my life’ in the Irish Examiner.
PRAXIS, the Artists Union of Ireland, proposed that
· the BIA scheme should be implemented permanently
· the BIA should be expanded to all eligible artists in Ireland
· the BIA should be allocated for an indefinite period of time
· the rate of the BIA should be indexed to inflation. You can read the full statement at ‘THE CASE FOR THE BASIC INCOME FOR THE ARTS’.
A letter from Basic Income Ireland (BII) in the Irish Times called for the retention of the BIA and its extension to all arts workers. BII also proposed a surtax on the incomes of its higher income recipients. You can read the letter here.
The Minister of Culture stated that ‘Numerous countries express interest in Government’s basic income for artists pilot scheme’. Officials from Australia, Wales, South Korea, Canada, Norway, Lithuania, Estonia, “northern European arts councils and the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU” requested information about the scheme.
After all the positive feedback about the BIA scheme, there were high expectations about the transformation of the pilot into a permanent programme in the Government Budget 2026. The good news is that some form of BIA has now been made a permanent feature of Arts and Culture funding. The less good news is that the pilot will end in February 2026 and the arrangement of the permanent successor scheme is completely unclear at the moment. You can read the press release here.
The Irish Times seemed to have access to more detailed information:
‘…the scheme will now operate on a permanent footing, with a new round open for applicants from September next year. The size of the scheme will mirror that in the pilot, although it may expand next year to 2,200, if additional funding can be found. The intention is to incrementally open it up to more people in the years ahead. The application criteria will also be expanded to include more artistic disciplines…’
You can read the full article ‘Basic income support scheme for artists to be made permanent and opened to new entrants in budget’
However, judging from the design of the public consultation, it seems likely that the new programme will be limited to a new group of about 2000 recipients, who will receive payments for a limited number of years, and will then be replaced by a new cohort. There is also a risk that recipients will be selected on the basis of ‘economic need’, driving the programme further away from the key features of basic income of universality, permanence and unconditionality.
The UK magazine Big Issue with the mission to end poverty has written about the developments of the BIA scheme in Ireland and its relevance for the UK: Ireland's basic income scheme for artists is being made permanent. Would it work in the UK?
This article was coauthored by Reinhard Huss (UBI Lab Leeds and Network) and John Baker (Basic Income Ireland)
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