The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has undertaken to re-examine the welfare entitlements of actors who are unemployed between jobs.
Ms Mary Coughlan gave this commitment yesterday to an Oireachtas committee after a cross-party plea was made for changes in the social welfare regime to recognise the intermittent nature of actors' work.
Irish Actors' Equity, which represents about,500 performance artists, has been lobbying for changes to social welfare rules for several years.
The group, which is part of the SIPTU union, wants actors to be allowed to pursue their profession for three years, while also claiming Unemployment Benefit while demonstrating that they were looking for work by attending auditions.
Currently, all unemployed people, including actors must, after about three months spent claiming social welfare payments while actively seeking acting work in their particular field, accept any employment for which they are qualified.
Earlier, Ms Coughlan told the committee it was a "cardinal principal of the availability for work condition that a person's unemployment must be involuntary and it is not possible for an unemployed person to hold himself or herself available exclusively for any type of irregular or unpredictable employment in his or her chosen field".
She said she could not introduce a specific scheme for actors which would have "huge repercussions" for other people like firemen, nurses and cleaners who can also have intermittent work patterns.
She pointed to a generous dedicated welfare scheme for actors in France which led to the numbers of registered actors quadrupling in a decade and led to a deficit of €828 million last year.