IAmNotReallyASpring, when you say, "You can choose your nationality" what does that mean? Do you get to enroll as a citizen under the term of your choice, or are you talking about how people identify themselves?
One can have exclusively Irish citizenship while having been born in the North. I don't know what the procedures for obtaining it are and I don't know where certain boundaries are drawn (though I would think many of those boundaries are still undefined). Like, I can remember people up north inquiring to know if they could draw the Irish dole (They couldn't). Since the foundation of the North, the nationalist/Catholic community has been identifying itself as Irish, so that's not new, and there was also (and still are) articles in the Irish constitution that gave citizenship to some people not born in the Republic.
Well yeah, but why couldn't they just pay tax is their earning bracket like the rest of us?
The reasoning behind it is that artists aren't on a fixed incomes and are at a disadvantage because of that. When you're getting paid, say, book to book, securing a mortgage is a problem. Also, let's say you sell your novel for 50 grand and you were taxed in the top bracket, by the time you sell your next book, maybe two years later, you're poor again.
I guess, mainly to me it suggests that the government wishes to encourage the arts . . .but I imagine what it actually wants is for people who are already successful as artists to stay in Ireland and you know add to the economy by buying goods and services and encouraging tourists.
I think it was introduced as a genuine way of supporting the arts. The man responsible for it, Charlie Hughey, fancied himself as bit of a Renaissance man and seemed to want to grant artists an opportunity to make a decent living. Also, I've found that the Irish are quite proud of the arts, especially the literary tradition, and are inclined to foot the struggling artist's bill if they're seen to be enriching the culture. But maybe that isn't true.