Ireland plans a 100 euro culture voucher teenagers can spend at music venues

Ireland is preparing to hand every 16-year-old in the country a 100 euro voucher to spend on culture, with live music venues among the places that will take it. NME reports, citing RTE, that the scheme will be launched in next month's budget, and that if it works it could be widened to cover all 17-year-olds in the following year's budget.

The mechanics are straightforward. Those eligible would redeem the card by digital download, and spend it at cinemas, theatres and live music venues. Patrick O'Donovan, the Minister for Arts, Media and Culture, is expected to settle his department's allocation with Jack Chambers, the Minister for Public Expenditure, in the coming days, and is still working through the final specifics. The cost to the state is put at between seven and eight million euro.

Ireland would be joining a group rather than leading one. France, Spain and Italy all run culture cards of this kind, worth between 300 and 500 euro, aimed at getting young people out of the house and into venues. Against those, 100 euro is a modest opening position, and the age cut-off at 16 is narrow enough to keep the bill small.

The idea has been circling Irish politics for a while. The Programme For Government committed in early 2025 to examining a culture card for 16 and 17-year-olds, and the department began contacting potential partners and stakeholders after that. Sinn Fein had launched its own proposal in 2024 for a 130 euro card covering culture and sport, after surveys found attendance at live events among young adults had fallen sharply since the pandemic. Fianna Fail TD Peter Cleere has separately pushed a 100 euro card given on an 18th birthday, and it is still unclear whether 18-year-olds will see anything from the scheme now taking shape.

Two open questions remain. Some government TDs want sporting venues added to the list, which would stretch the same money across a much larger sector. O'Donovan has also been looking at whether the card might cover participatory activities such as workshops, classes and community-based sessions rather than tickets alone, which would push it from an audience subsidy towards a music education one.

A voucher for teenagers sits inside a wider run of Irish arts spending. Last autumn the government approved making the Basic Income for the Arts scheme permanent for more than 2,000 creative workers and musicians, after a pilot that started in 2022. In spring 2025 it announced a 500,000 euro fund for grassroots venues, with O'Donovan saying at the time that such rooms are "an integral part of the music ecosystem in Ireland and are vital to our communities".

The grassroots end is where a voucher of this size would actually land. A hundred euro does not reach a stadium show, and Ireland has plenty of those coming, with Fontaines D.C. booked for two nights at Slane Castle next summer. It does cover several nights in a small room, which is the part of the ecosystem that has been closing. Britain has been trying to solve the same problem from the artist side rather than the audience side, as when Sub Focus put a pound from every ticket into the grassroots venue levy.