Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

You would honestly think that Deputies Matthews, Ó Murchú and Boyd Barrett were talking about different industries and sectors. I am saying all this because my Department and I are very interested in the application of this credit. In all honesty, shortly after, or maybe around the time of, the different committee hearings referred to, my Department met SIPTU and Screen Guilds of Ireland, which are organisations that represent 2,000 film crew workers. They did not raise with us the kind of industrial relations issues the Deputies raised. They did not raise them. They did not raise concerns regarding blackballing allegations, which did not come up. That is not to second-guess or dismiss the issues the Deputies raised. I accept behaviour must be happening that is giving rise to the concerns referred to but I make the case that this is a tax instrument that is working well, that is regularly reviewed, and the changes we have made to accessing the credit have played a role in a few other developments. For example, we now have two collective bargaining agreements in place, namely, a shooting crew agreement and a construction crew agreement. I am pretty sure that when Deputy Boyd Barrett and I began engaging on this issue, neither of those collective agreements were in place. They are in place now.

The Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, conducted an audit of the sector in 2020 which neither recommended a change in section 481 or in the use of DACs. It did not make recommendations to make the kind of change some Deputies suggested. It recommended collective bargaining agreements and the strengthening of guilds, all of which are under way and happening. We should come up with a better metaphor for DACs than mushrooms, given we are talking about such an artistic sector. They flower, perhaps, and then die shortly afterwards, but that is the nature of an industry where projects are created, film by film, to ring-fence the profits and the cost of a film. When the film and production happen, something else takes its place. It is not the role of tax policy, nor does it have the ability, to bring about the collective reshaping of the industrial relations aspects of the sector the Deputies are concerned about. It is the job of unions and their representative employer bodies to engage with each other through collective bargaining and make improvements on issues that both acknowledge and agree are there. The description of the sector that Deputies Boyd Barrett and Ó Murchú offered is at odds with my sense of where the sector stands at present, the feedback I am getting and the figures contained in the report my Department published a number of months ago.

All that being said, we are following what is happening in the hearings that are being conducted by the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. My officials participated in those hearings and we are looking at the issues that are being raised. I assure Deputy Boyd Barrett regarding the issue of profit suppression, which I do not think was raised at the committee. I think he said the issue came up in a letter or email he received after a meeting of that committee. I assure the Deputy that Revenue is well able to deal with issues relating to profit suppression.

If the Deputy wants to make that information available to me or directly available to the Revenue Commissioners, I am confident that they will follow up on any concern he has.