Mr. Gerry O'Brien:

I will not put on my president of the union hat but my actor's hat. I have worked in Los Angeles, other parts of America, London and all over England. When I mention the type of contracts we sign here, there is an audible gasp from my acting colleagues in those countries. They are genuinely concerned that the sort of buy-out contract that exists here is allowed to exist. In the US, the industry is the success it is because there was a tough union that fought for the exploitation rights of its performers, and went on strike for those rights through the years, when those things were easier to do. They went on strike and they fought for those rights. It was the same in the UK. Up to a point in Ireland, we were mimicking what was going in the UK because I also worked under that regime as regards film contracts. People there are actually shocked. I will reference one sentence in an agreement without identifying anyone because it appears across a tranche of contracts for actors. It states that it is an agreement that is not subject to the jurisdiction of any guild, labour or collective bargaining unit agreement, and covers the engagement of the artist by the producer of the film for the compensation set forth with said compensation being inclusive of all buy-outs in all media now known or hereafter devised in all territories in perpetuity.

For an agreed figure, an actor will get a fee that is broken down into two sections. One section is the performance fee, which is what the actor gets for turning up, creating the performance and doing the job at God knows what hour and in what location. It is done, made and recorded. There is then what is called a usage fee, which is made up of various percentages for the different platforms that exist. It sounds complicated but it is not. It involves taking 280% and adding that. If an actor's performance fee is €100, then another €280 is added and that fee becomes €380. People think an actor is making that for a day's work but the trick is to divide it by 50 because that is the number of years actors own that property. It is vested in the performer for 50 years. It then begins to break down quite a lot. That fee is for all the platforms. If we then take every single DVD sale for a year, and everything right down, including all the downloads, all the sales to television, all the programmes on American and UK television and all the European television stations, etc., that contract has bought all those rights for €380, or €600, €500 or €700. Once it is a buy-out, it does not matter what other calculations are put on it. There is a ten year buy-out and a buy-out in perpetuity. Once there is a buy-out, there is no variability allowed in what actors get for the exploitation of their work, and where no variability exists there can be no proportionality. It used to be equitable remuneration but none of that can exist for actors.

I will leave the details vague, but I looked at a very large production that received quite a large amount of money from the taxpayer and broke it down in that way. The performance fee broke down to €394.73 for a week. That was a 55-hour week, however, so it worked out at approximately €7.17 per hour for those performers. The usage fee was €1,105 for a buy-out in perpetuity. When we start to break it down over 50 years, etc., it ends up at 42 cent a week for everything globally, including all the DVD sales, all the television transmissions, all the streaming platforms and everything else. It does not matter where it is sold; that is what the actor gets. It is contained within that €1,000 so it can never get better but can only get smaller. A ruling was made a long time ago that I read on a lawyer's website - unfortunately, I read these things instead of scripts now - which stated that any contract that does not have a variable component to it cannot therefore allow equitable remuneration to take place. That is the phrasing from the copyright Act. There is a section that actually covers performance rights within the legislation.

What an actor is given is a document that says the actor agrees that is what is in this contract is proportionate and adequate. An actor will sign that and sign away all his or her rights without fully understanding what they are and what value they have.

There is a whole generation of actors coming up in Ireland who have never seen a residual payment of a structured nature in their contract. That is a loss to our community. From that point of view, the Olsberg report is failing because it is not raising the standard of living within the cultural community. This is the biggest investment by the State in our industry and in the lives of actors.

I know actors who say they will not work on a film because they cannot afford it. It used to be that we would not do theatre work because we could not afford it and film was our saviour, but now we cannot afford it. That is the situation we are in. I hope that helps to explain it.