I attended the launch of a pre-budget submission hosted by the Music and Entertainment Association of Ireland, MEAI, outside Leinster House. It was a powerful launch. MEAI was formed in June 2020 as a result of the pandemic which decimated the entire industry. Since then it has worked tirelessly, on a voluntary basis, to represent the industry to Government and help find solutions to reopen the industry. I am privileged to be one of 11 Oireachtas Members involved with the MEAI committee, which was established in May 2021. Thankfully many of its members were in attendance today to support the pre-budget submission. The theme of the MEAI submission is invigorate, involve and inspire, which I thought was wonderful. I believe its requests will help to rebuild and regrow the industry through the plans of invigoration and involvement.

I wanted to highlight two requests in particular. MEAI has requested an increase in funding for the independent live entertainment sector from €50 million to €75 million. It suggested a number of schemes for this €75 million which would create employment opportunities for workers in the sector. This would be done through inclusion and interaction between the sector and children, people with disabilities and the elderly. These schemes are directly targeted towards local authority schemes and bringing music and entertainment back into communities that have been starved of the experience for over 18 months.

MEAI has also requested a pilot scheme for artists with disabilities which seeks to remove the income threshold for artists in receipt of disability payments from the Department of Social Protection. This scheme would empower those artists and promote self-growth and development in their work and personal lives.

Other requests include: the implementation of universal basic income for artists; the application of reduced VAT rates for performers and bands in the sector; the creation of a Covid-19 insurance guarantee scheme for events; and a census of the music and entertainment industry in Ireland. We all know and have experienced the joy of live music, as I did outside this morning. It was lovely to hear music at the launch. It was a reminder that we can never take music and entertainment for granted again and must protect and value it in the future. I want to call on the Minister, Deputy Martin, and her colleagues in the Government to consider and act on the requests in the MEAI pre-budget submission.

I endorse the remarks of Senator Black around the importance of music and the arts. As she said, it is great that gigs are back and events are starting to happen again. Things have been difficult and we need to support the sector as it reopens.

I want to raise the question of pensions. I am concerned by some of the very populist debate that is happening around pensions at the moment and that we are not thinking sufficiently long-term. Those who will sit their leaving certificate next year will probably not retire until the late 2060s or early 2070s. They will have a life expectancy of 90. They will live a lot longer. The big difference between now and 30 years' time is that at the moment there are five people working for every one person who has retired but within 30 years we will be in a situation where, on current projections, we will only have two workers for everybody over the age of 65. I worry that this timebomb is something we are not addressing.

When we are having a debate around what age people should retire at now, we are not looking at the bigger picture. We continue to kick the can down the road. Many of our fellow European countries, such as Italy, Germany and France, have failed to address this issue and that has now led to large-scale social unrest and disagreement between the generations. I worry that because of our failure to address this long-term issue, and given some of the populist language being used during the pensions debate, those now aged in their teens, 20s and 30s will suffer far more because we are not having a realistic debate. I ask for a comprehensive and real debate on the long-term implications of pensions.