Mr. Gerry O'Brien:

The answer to that is that we all should be the beneficiaries, but we are not at the moment. I started my career 50 years ago. I saw an Ireland where if I met somebody from the crew boasting that there was one film in Ardmore last year and that he or she worked on it, that was a bonus year, a bumper year, for people. The growth in the past 25 or 30 years is down to the stimulus the Government has given. I have not seen an increase in the quality of life of the performers or the crew to a great degree, and that is down to negotiations and a lot of other factors. We work extraordinarily hard. People see the red carpet. They do not see the hard work, the 5 a.m. calls, the long hours and the 11-hour days. They do not see all the work that goes into creating those 90 minutes on the screen. Everybody should benefit.

Now, when I say the real wealth does not exist at the point of production, that is where the hard work exists. The real wealth exists in the distribution globally. You can have a €1 million, €10 million or €100 million financial bomb in a certain location, but the real wealth then lies in the €800 million, €900 million or €1 billion in revenue that is generated from that. If we had, as our colleagues in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England and in the US and Canada have, a proportionate remuneration, as stated in the EU directive, from those revenue streams making their way back to us, we would all benefit from the success of the industry. We need to have two sectors here. We have the point of production, where we need fair play, fair hours and the working time Act. Then we have the copyright Act. That is the part where actors make their living, and that has been denied to Irish actors. I cannot say, therefore, that everybody is benefiting equally.