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

To clarify, I am in favour of more public investment in the arts and the film industry but not necessarily, and for the reasons I have indicated, section 481. Our guests say that the particular nature of the industry means companies of scale are actually much smaller. I put it to them that this is not the case with animation. An animation company can have a much bigger workforce that enjoys some security of employment. I do not accept that that cannot be done with live action film and television. Given the amount of public money going in and the fact that it is largely going to nine companies, and if, as our guests describe it, there are ten to 15 people in each company, how many people have permanent jobs when the figures are added up? Is it 100, 200 or 300? That is a significant problem. Whether our guests say it is 2,000 or 7,000, it means that all the rest have absolutely no security of income or employment from project to project. I put it to the them that this is the current situation and that there is nothing to stop wholesale displacement of people who may have worked in the industry for years or blacklisting, which has been alleged not just by some of those outside the ICTU fold but even the Irish Equity representative here in January 2018. He stated that there was a significant problem with bullying and harassment and that workers had no protection. Who is the employer of these people? The production company is not, or at least it tells the Workplace Relations Commission that it is not.