Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. O'Brien and Ms Quinn. I also thank the committee for dealing with this issue.

I understand that Irish Equity supports section 481, albeit with a significant number of caveats. Anybody listening in on this would have significant worries and caveats in relation to section 481. In fairness, Mr. O'Brien largely dealt with the issue of copyright. Ms Quinn backed him up in the sense that if one does not sign, one does not get working. That is hardly fair. Obviously, legislation seems to be the only means of dealing with a proper protection from the point of view that the directive is not sufficiently strong to cut the mustard.

If we could deal with section 481, something Mr. O'Brien said that we dealt with to an extent previously is the possibility of, for the want of a better term, fraud and the need to curtail this. Mr. O'Brien might give a general outline in that regard. Also, a good point made was that we are talking about securing the taxpayers' investment where people understand that to provide a return. It is not only a working sustainable industry and we are talking about intellectual property and a net result in some cases which will have a valuable stream of revenue. It would make sense, if the State invested, that it also got moneys back. These could be moneys that are used to make the overall industry more sustainable and to ensure we have an adequate supply of actors and crew who are looked after properly. We will not be able to produce many great films if we do not have those two anyway.