Vol. 466 No. 7
44 Mr. M. McDowell asked the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht the statistics, if any, available in respect of the number of people working full-time and part-time in the arts in Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9047/96]
The report entitled "The Employment and Economic Significance of the Cultural Industries in Ireland" commissioned by Temple Bar Properties and prepared by Coopers and Lybrand Corporate Finance, assisted by a consortium of State agencies including my own Department, and published in October 1994, was the first analysis on a national scale carried out to establish the economic significance — and especially the employment content — of the cultural industries in Ireland. The research of this report was carried out over the 12 month period October 1993 to October 1994 and the findings showed that the cultural industries in Ireland give employment to some 33,800 people. Like many other sectors, cultural industries provide a mixture of permanent and temporary employment on both a full-time and part-time basis and the figure of 33,800 which was identified by the Coopers and Lybrand and research in October 1994 represented 21,500 full-time equivalent posts or 1.9 per cent of the employed workforce at that time.
