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

I thank the Chairman and I apologise in advance because I must leave to put a question to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, about some of these matters we are talking about here. I may have to run as soon as I see my number coming up. I listened to some of the presentation by Professor Doherty earlier on the monitor. My apologies I was not in the committee for it.

I have been following this over the past year. I did not know much about it but since then I have learnt quite a lot about how it applies to the film industry. I do not know if Professor Doherty has looked at this much but there is a big dispute going on in the film industry, to put it mildly, about this whole area. It relates to who are the employers and who are the employees. The witness may or may not be aware of the structure of the Irish film industry, which is financed by tax relief. The tax relief has to be put through a special purpose vehicle, SPV, or designated activity companies, DAC, that are set up for the purposes of the specific movie. Those tax reliefs are given to standing production companies, but the production company does not make the film. The SPV is the agency that makes the film and people are employed by the SPV. Standing behind the SPV, however, is the real producer company that is not time limited to the production.

What many film workers are raging about is that this structure means they have no rights because there is, in effect, no employer. The workers will go further and say that if they ask for rights, or the application of the fixed-term contract legislation, or for the working time directive, they will never be asked back again. They feel strongly pressured to declare as self-employed or if they attempt to assert their rights if they manage to get a PAYE contract. I am curious as to what Professor Doherty thinks of all this.

There have been some rulings from the Workplace Relations Commission where workers have taken cases. Workers in those cases, for example, have said that the producer company behind the production is the employer. They argue that the SPV might have a different identity for every production, but standing behind that SPV is a producer company that constantly draws down this tax relief, and the worker has worked for these people on multiple occasions.

That producer company is saying that these workers are not its employees and have nothing to do with it and that, therefore, it has no obligations to them. It seems to say that fixed term contract legislation does not apply to it. I am trying to get the bottom of that. I will ask the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, about this issue. Given that the Irish film industry is financed overwhelmingly by public money, this seems to be an unacceptable situation. What does Professor Doherty think about that? In his understanding, does fixed term contract legislation apply to people in the film industry? I understand there are only a few derogations from that legislation and film is not one of them. Other than those derogations, the legislation applies.

I accept that there are some grey areas, but there is a control test, as set out in the code of practice for determining self-employment status for individuals. Surely teams from Revenue and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection could be sent in to companies to find out who their employees are and establish the boxes those employees tick. Are they coming in from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock? Is somebody else telling them what to do? Do they get lunch breaks if someone else tells them they have to have them? It could be established fairly quickly whether they were employees or employers, and who the employer is. I would be interested in any thoughts or insights into that area that Professor Doherty could provide.

The issue of penalties may have arisen earlier. There have to be penalties. What is Professor Doherty's understanding of the application of penalties? I do not see that there are any for those who breach this legislation.