A local musician is blasting Minister Heather Humphreys comments about the entertainment industry.
The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection has come under fire for her suggestion that musicians should be “realistic” and retrain in a new industry.
She claims ‘some jobs will not come back and there is no point in waiting’.
Tomás Jackman is a Kilkenny singer-songwriter who has been in the business for 40 years.
He says he has invested too much into his music to give it up now:
“People have to remember that there’s a lot of investment put into being a full-time musician. It’s not just a matter of picking up a guitar and then going out and doing gigs. There’s the equipment- I personally would have 30 or 40 thousand euros worth of equipment. Also then there’s the time invested into it. That all takes money. So for someone to come along and say ‘pack it all in, give it up and get a new job’, that’s just ridiculous.”
