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

This is a reply to the Minister and he is correct on some level in the sense that I did not speak about the huge successes there have been in the Irish film industry. Maybe I should have said that at the outset but the fact is that we want that to continue. We want to ensure that we have what I spoke about earlier, namely, a sustainable industry that provides a good level of employment and training and then ensures enough throughput to maintain it throughout. The Minister accepted that the issues we brought up are ones that have been brought to us by those who work in the industry.

I will go through this quickly. The producer applies for the grant money but the grant money is given to the DAC. Deputy Boyd Barrett dealt with the ins and outs of who is an employer and who is not and the difficulties that are caused by that. There is the particular issue with the intellectual property, IP, and the artist. In years gone by they were able to get better contracts with residuals and the sign-off but that is not the case at this point in time. When we had the producers and Screen Guilds of Ireland, SGI, in the committee for an interaction there was an acceptance on some level - as much as they did not accept everything that we put in front of them - that there was an insufficient amount of collective agreements to deal with the IP and workers' rights issues. The issue is what the number is and what it looks like. People who are working as crew in the film industry are saying that the ratios are not what they were previously and that there was a greater number of experienced staff. They claim - and I know this is refuted on some level - that there is a shortage of experienced staff and that there is a huge number of trainees. This is not from the point of view of training but to a degree, it is a race to the bottom. I have had the same reports that Deputy Boyd Barrett has had on the fact that anybody who complains about anything is shown where the road is.

The big thing is that we are dealing with a huge power differential. We can talk about Screen Producers Ireland, SPI, SGI and Screen Ireland and all the rest of it but crew and others will say that they are not represented on any of these bodies. I accept what the Minister says when he says that the tax code is not the means by which you deal with this but we need a proper review or investigation from the point of view of putting the correct framework in place. That is the thing that is missing. I ask that we get into the ins and outs of what those figures are because it is a question of the ratios of people working on film sets and all the rest of it. My fear is that as much as people are saying they are not necessarily great working conditions, beyond that the whole film industry is at risk if we do not get a handle on it. This might be beyond the remit of what we are dealing with but we have to address this issue by any means possible. Representation of crew and artists is something that is missing from the entire model.