Ms Karan O'Loughlin:

In the context of the workplace, I wanted to make that point clear. In regard to the working time directive, how it operates in the film industry needs to be understood. The working time directive sets a maximum of 48 working hours in any week, but that is calculated as an average over 17 weeks. Within the film industry, unless a person is in a long-running production, of which there are not many, the chances of working more than 17 weeks are slim. A person could be within the parameters of the working time Act while working 55 or 60 hours a week for 10 or 12 weeks. That is still within the parameters of the working time Act because it is averaged out over 17 weeks. That is the law, that is the way it is written, and that is the way it is interpreted. I am not saying it is right, but that is the way it is.

That 17 week rolling average can be expanded by agreement. Agreements can be made to work out that average over a 12 month period. That is done in other industries where work is cyclical, where people would work six months of the year, for example, picking mushrooms. They would work intensively for a period of time and then stop. The problem with the film industry and the working time directive is that if I work 60 hours a week for ten weeks on a production, that is not outside the working time directive. If I move to another production straight away and work another 60 hours a week for another ten weeks, I am outside the working time directive in the hours I have worked over the 20 weeks, but each of those production companies, considered separately, is not. That is a problem. That is the way the legislation is written. The Government would need to address that in some way to make the industry more compatible with the law. That is the factually correct answer.