Ms Liz Murray:

Three of our members took a case to scope because they had been employees for a number of years and were then encouraged to become self-employed because in 2009, the film industry entered into an agreement with the Revenue Commissioners that permitted certain grades with qualifying conditions to be self-employed. Regarding the three people, of whom I am aware, scope found against the employer in those cases but those three people were not listed. The contracts that were issued to them called them something else other than the grade in which they were actually employed. This was done to suit the document. In 2019, the document was withdrawn but a new version is under negotiation. I have seen the draft of the new version and the people negotiating it are a commercial semi-State company, Screen Ireland. I do not know what its involvement is but it has a huge involvement in employment matters that should not have anything to do with it. The new document is being negotiated and they are looking to include actors as employees. The irony is that we, the crew who have worked for all of these years, are not employees when it comes to prosecuting legal rights of entitlement. Actors are truly freelance because they have unique qualities and Screen Ireland now wants them to be employees. My suspicion is that someone who is an employee of a company does not have any intellectual property rights. That question needs to be asked as well.