The Government is denying artists an opportunity of benefiting financially from successive sales of their work, the Artists Association of Ireland claimed yesterday.
The association is objecting to the exclusion of resale rights for visual artworks from the forthcoming Copyright Bill. According to Ms Stella Coffey, the association's executive director, an artist's resale right or droit de suite already exists in 11 member-states of the European Union.
This right permits the artist responsible for a work to receive a percentage of what is paid whenever the work is resold.
Ireland, however, has yet to introduce legislation to enforce these rights and has opposed a European Council directive on the resale right to benefit by the author of an original art work.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Minister of State for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Tom Kitt, said successive governments had consistently opposed droit de suite "because we don't think it a very worthwhile measure".