Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I might pick up on that point first because I have read the analysis. The Deputy rightly posed significant questions about the film relief and put the caveat that while the section 481 relief should be extended for certainty in the industry, it needs to be monitored and scrutinised. It should be monitored and scrutinised closely. He alluded to the need for that to happen.

Mention was rightly made about training. Beyond having a specific minimum number of trainees per production, the relationship between this significant expenditure and the training, accreditation and qualification of trainees is unclear. I put it to Ms Donaghy, and she might give an opinion, that there is no connection at all because there is no accreditation process or qualification process.

There is no tracking of trainees with the result that we do not know whether they progress from one production to another. Perhaps Ms Donaghy can comment on employment in the same regard. Section 481 requires the provision in exchange for this very significant tax relief of quality employment and training but we, again, have no real tracking of the former. A great deal of dispute arises on estimates of how many jobs the relief is responsible for with figures proposed from 17,000 to practically zero. It is a pretty big spectrum of opinion. There is a significant difference between 17,000 jobs and almost none and we need to get to the bottom of that. It is an actual condition of the relief, after all. Can Ms Donaghy confirm the analysis in the report that the Department has made it somewhat a condition of continuing the relief that these things will be looked at? If so, I agree completely. Does she accept that we do not really have a handle on the extent to which it is contributing to meaningful training connected to career pathways and tracking employment? Even the people who receive the relief have been on television to say nobody expects job security in the film industry. They say things like "You are only as good as your last job." That might be fine for them as they are in receipt of the relief, but for those who work for them and who do not have a job when the production is over or any idea of whether they will be employed on the next one, it is not so good. It does not add up to fulfilling the criterion of quality employment when even the people who are getting the relief describe the employment they give as totally precarious.