DETAILS OF IRISH MUSIC PRIVATISATION RELEASED

By Mort

The Irish Government has announced its intention to sell Irish traditional music, in its latest drive to sell off everything in the country that’s not actually nailed down.

The government spokesperson on the move is a young spiv with a sharp suit and a Business Masters, just recently acquainted with traditional music.

“I was in a pub where this stuff was going on, and someone mentioned how valuable this music is to tourism and the general economy,”

“My ears picked up and I asked, so who owns it? I was told that its owned by the people. Well a massive cash register just went off in my abacus for a brain.”

“This as a perfect opportunity to unlock some of the country’s natural wealth. Its completely antiquated and inefficient for national treasures such as these to remain locked up in public ownership. The free market and some shameless friends of mine are best placed to manage and make an immoral profit from these intellectual property rights ,” said the spokes-spiv.

The Ministry for Asset Stripping is preparing a public Request for Expression of Interest process for sale of the entire catalogue in lots. While it would be nice to keep the music in Ireland, realistically ownership will probably go overseas, possibly to a country that doesn’t have much culture of its own to speak of. There’s strong interest already coming from Disney Group and purveyors of ring tones.

Its rumoured that CCE will be contracted to prepare a cultural impact statement and a register of all real Irish tunes, in preparation for sale. In future musicians will be able access tunes through an easy to use pay as you play system.