In the last couple weeks there have been articles about Ireland making their basic income for artists program permanent. What that means is that around 2000 artists will be randomly chosen by lottery to receive 325 euros (~$383 USD) a week for three years. Then another 2000 artists will be chosen. This mirrors the trial phase of the program which ran from 2022-2025 where 2000 artists out of 8000 applicants were chosen.
A few days later another article took a more in depth look at the program. That article noted that while a lot of those in the trial program saw an improvement in quality of life, a lot of artists were obviously left out. The fact the new program is limited to 2000 people and cycles every three years means a lot of other people will be left out.
That said, Ireland is believed to be the only country to have made a basic income program for artists permanent. Now there are movements to try to do the same for other industries such as fishing, farming and weather based tourist attractions.
What I really found interesting was the recounting of the lengthy process that lead to the establishment of the guaranteed basic income program. Apparently, Ireland’s Greens Party had been interested in the concept back in 1981. Energy didn’t really coalesce around creating a program until the sense of desperation that existed during Covid shutdowns.
Then Minister for Arts Catherine Martin created the trail program. People interviewed for the piece credit Martin with investing the time and energy to make it a reality and then moving it toward becoming a permanent feature.
Basic income for artists was the first. “And it landed at a time when I think government was very open to thinking outside the box.”
It coincided with a “hearts and minds” campaign undertaken by the NCFA about the importance of the arts and a grassroots campaign in every county. There was also a higher than usual appreciation for the arts due to the successive lockdowns. “Then it was ‘over to you, minister’,” says Dorgan. “Catherine Martin spent every single cent of her political clout getting it through … It was her hill. And I think she was prepared to die on that hill.”
Living in a world where we can access information and order things so quickly it is easy to forget that generating energy and interest around an idea in order to bring large scale change sometimes takes decades. A lot of the basic work has to be done in order to take advantage of a moment of openness that occurred in Ireland during Covid.
It will be interesting to see if Ireland is able to expand the program to a broader range of artists and industries.
As a caveat to all this, I want to link back to a post I did in October 2025 on research that found basic income programs tend to emphasize a narrow set of positive outcomes and downplay significant areas of participants lives which did not improve. In many respects that may be an indication that the programs need to be designed to include a range of resources and support.
