This note is to promote a public discussion. It is referred to in Irish arts policy shames NZ Newsroom 23, March 2026
The Irish take their arts seriously which may explain their four Nobel Prizes in literature: W.B. Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Sean Heaney, with James Joyce a near miss*. But great trees don’t flourish without a vibrant understorey. Ireland’s is being nurtured by a Basic-Income-for-Artists Scheme.
The scheme is basically simple. Every three years 2000 artists – in writing, visual and performing arts – are awarded a €325 per week income for a three-year term. (The Irish unemployment benefit is between €125 and €450 euros per week.) They are chosen by lottery. The pilot scheme introduced in 2022 has been so successful that it is to be permanent. Research showed that those in receipt of the scheme were more productive, spent more time on their creative work and less time scrambling around working in the precariate on the borders of the labour market.
Other countries are looking to follow. Why not New Zealand? This is how it might work. Ireland has about the same population as New Zealand so let’s settle on 2000 artists per three-year term here too. Candidates would be selected by lottery. (Identifying future tall trees from the understorey is a hopeless task.) Any full-resident New Zealander who applies would go into the draw. (In the first round, there were 8000 Irish applicants.) They would be paid at the rate of the Job Seekers benefit – currently $361.42 net a week for over 25-year-olds, which would be treated as taxable income (so any additional earnings would be taxed).
The scheme would have a direct cost of about $37.6m a year (rising as benefit levels rose). You can hear the fiscal austerity brigade loudly objecting. But the net cost would be much lower. Some recipients will come off social security benefits – the advantage to them will be less stress, more certainty – at zero fiscal cost. Recipients will pay tax on their earnings, adding to fiscal revenue. Given the high level of unemployment, every participant that leaves a job creates the opportunity for an unemployed person to take it – another fiscal gain. Not to mention the wider gains to the community of a more vibrant arts scene.
The actual cost of the scheme may be near zero. A cost-benefit analysis found that for every €1 spent society received the equivalent of €1.39 in economic and social benefits back (a somewhat higher return than on some of those transport projects beloved by ministers.)
The big fiscal cost may its administration – New Zealand cultural administration seems to take a relatively high proportion of the funds available. The cost could be reduced by following Irish practices while avoiding committees of has-beens and never-wases making arbitrary decisions in favour of lotto would substantially reduce administration expenses.
Sound a good idea? How to get the scheme implemented? To be frank, the arts community it is not notable for its lobbying ability. Most could not even name the arts spokespeople in Parliament. (Some are nonentities – itself a measure of how ineffective the arts lobby is). This year’s election presents a window of political opportunity. Press each party to include a Basic-Income-for-Artists Scheme in their manifesto – make sure they keep to their commitment when they are in government.
* Margaret Mahey won the young people’s fiction equivalent of a Nobel Prize, when she was awarded the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006. Writing for children and adolescents has been strong in New Zealand perhaps because of the commitment to reading from the educational sector.