Public Lending Remuneration Scheme

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has announced recently that it has launched the Public Lending Remuneration Scheme in respect of the public library service.
The Scheme, which will be administered by An Chomhairle Leabharlanna (The Library Council) with the co-operation of the local authority library service, will provide that qualifying authors, whose books are loaned by public libraries, will receive remuneration in respect of such loans.
Under PLR, a payment will be made to registered authors, resident in the European Economic Area (EEA), in respect of books registered with the PLR and loaned by public library authorities.

Authors are required to register with An Chomhairle Leabharlanna, providing an address and bank details, etc. Details of books registered will be entered into an author/title database and checked against bibliographic databases for accuracy. Authors are required to register each title and each edition of each title for which they are claiming payment.

Public library authorities will provide An Chomhairle Leabharlanna with loans data, giving details of the number of times each book in their collections is issued during a specified period.

At the end of the PLR period, the loans data from each authority will be matched to the author/title data and a list of authors whose books have been loaned, and the number of issues of each, will be produced. Authors will then be notified of the amount they are to receive and payments will be made.

Payment will be made to authors in respect of their contribution to the work for which the payment is due. The scheme will allow for the percentage of the payment to be made for various levels of contribution, which include, inter alia, contributions such as sole author, joint author, editor, translator, and illustrator.

The rate of payment will be set each year and will be the product of the total number of loans for which a payment is due, divided by the total amount available. Illustrators, photographers, editors and translators may all register for PLR (providing they are named on the title page of a book).