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

I stand with the workers, whether they are deemed to be above or below the line. The Minister understands my point. It is an insulting notion because they are all equally important in the production of a film - everybody from the painter, costume designer, stagehand and transport drivers to the actors, directors and so forth.

It is the case that if one is a painter who paints the stages, a very specialised thing, or somebody who works in props, again a very specialised thing, one might have worked in the industry for up to four decades and for the same group of producers. It is a group, and I have spoken to the Minister's officials about this. It is not necessarily the same producer every time, but in Ireland there is a relatively small group of producer companies. They are the overwhelming beneficiaries of section 481, and everybody knows who they are. There are smaller producer companies that may be set up on a much smaller scale, but everybody knows the big producer companies and everybody knows they are the largest recipients, year in and year out. They also have representatives and friends on Screen Ireland, which is the official State body and which is, in my opinion, just looking after their interests. I believe there is a conflict of interest in many cases in the way in which Screen Ireland, which is also dishing out grants, has such a close relationship to one particular group in the film industry, the film producers. That is an issue that must be addressed. It is not particularly in the Minister's remit, but part of the problem here is that there are a number of different Departments dealing with this, including the Department of Finance, the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

My point is that somebody can have worked for three or four decades for the same group of producers, but when a film is being done by a producer the person has worked with previously and when the person asks to work on it the producer can just say: "No, we do not like you. You spoke up about conditions on the job and you spoke publicly in a way that was critical of us, so you are not getting a job here". There is nothing in the law to prevent that from happening. They seem to be able to get away with it. I am somewhat nonplussed as to how they are doing this, given that the Minister has made genuine efforts and I acknowledge them. When the worker who is a victim of that goes to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, or the Labour Court, a representative of the film producer is standing across from him or her. The worker has worked with that film producer on a section 481 production. The film producer knows it, the worker knows it and they have often done it time and again, yet the film producer can say that the worker was never his or her employee. Often the producer will send a representative to say it because he or she does not even turn up. Recently at one of these hearings the producer sent in somebody from IBEC, which is quite extraordinary. I do not understand how IBEC is able to represent somebody in such a situation. That is what is happening.

Why is that? It is because the worker is an employee of the designated activity company, DAC. The film producer company gets section 481. The film producer sets up the DAC for the specific film project, but when the worker asserts his or her rights and says those rights are being breached in terms of a collective agreement - the WRC found in favour of the workers recently for breach of a collective agreement - or in terms of unfair dismissal because the worker had previously worked for the film producer and the worker is dismissed, the film producer who is getting the relief, and I remind the Minister that it is conditional on quality employment and training, says he is not the employer, even though he self-evidently is the employer because the DAC he set up is the employer. The DAC no longer exists and, therefore, the producer has no responsibility to the worker. That is fundamentally wrong.

I also believe that if the EU Commission, and it is getting to that level, was aware that the scale of the relief that is being distributed through section 481 was being abused in this way, it would ask serious questions about state aid. Do not get me wrong, the State's aid to the arts is absolutely necessary and justified. I always have to reiterate that I want more money to go into film, arts, culture and so forth, and I have actively campaigned for that, but I want it to be conditional on decent employment conditions for the people who work in the sector. The specific state aid that is allowed in the area of arts, culture and film requires an effort to build up companies of scale and a permanent pool of skills. As I discussed with one of the Minister's officials yesterday, it cannot be the case, and nobody is asking for it, that a particular film producer company employs the workers for 52 weeks of the year on a permanent basis. Let us dispense with that red herring in case it is thrown out. Nobody is asking for that.

Everybody knows that is not possible. Personally, I think it is possible at some point in the future but I will leave that for another day. There used to be film studios that did that kind of thing and, arguably, film was better then, but I will leave that aside. Even without that argument, that production can be a bit more episodic does not absolve the film producer companies that get this money again and again, particularly at the moment when there is a lot of film production happening and there is no real shortage of work. The film producer can say they work in a precarious industry, from film to film, and claim that, therefore, they have no obligation to the worker. They can say that if the worker ever tries to assert any obligations on the producer's part to the worker, they will simply deny they have any employment relationship with him or her.

That is still not being addressed and it means people are wide open to and have been victims of straight-up blacklisting. If they rock the boat, they can become victims of blacklisting. People from the acting fraternity have even appeared before Oireachtas committees and said they are afraid. Let us think about Harvey Weinstein and all that stuff. He was doing this for years. If you did not do what he wanted you to do, sometimes awful things, he had the power to put you out of the industry and say you will never work again. That can happen above the line - it does happen there - and it can also happen to the below-the-line people.