Mr. John Arkins:

Basically, it is very simple. One should have one employee for every producer on the Irish Film Board. One should have the balance that the Deputy referred to, the balance should be equal. If one has all producers on the Irish Film Board, all members of Screen Producers Ireland, SPI, where is the balance? When one applies to the funding agency one is either a SPI member or a member of the film board, and probably both. If you are asking me as a worker, I genuinely believe if that if there are five producers or ten producers, there should be five or ten workers. It should be a 50:50 participation. They must be workers, as laid down in the legislation, not service providers, not contractors, but workers. Then one might have a balanced outlook on the board, then one might have a balanced view, then one might have people dealing with the issues within the industry that need to be dealt with. We are trying to do it on a job by job basis, we are trying to do it with the employers who have employed us. We had an agreement with the employer that did the job in Limerick. He left his entire crew behind. One of them is in the WRC next week.

We know what the problems are, not only are our employment rights being trampled on here, our constitutional rights are too, as is our freedom to make a living and carry out our occupation. People have worked as stage hands since the 1700s, we have done it in this industry for 30 years in my own case, 37 and 42 years. We cannot work for an employer that we have worked for in the past. We have been excluded because we will not be part of a deception that we live locally. No film crew lives locally. Film crews come from all over the world. We have people from New Zealand doing jobs that we have done. We have been excluded; we have an agreement being brought in with an entity that cannot have such an agreement. We have a crazy situation where people are being forced to accept a job as local crew. If one does not, the person does not get the job. Who are they trying to deceive? Production companies come in here for three things - facilities, tax incentives and crew. We have given five reports to the Government and four of these reports - from New York to New Zealand - have referred 50 times to access to a professional crew. The Irish report, which was done by our industry, has a single line reference.