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

I said I would take 30 seconds and I hope I will not make a liar of myself. I welcome the Minister's interaction. There is an acceptance of the need for a greater level of collective agreements across the board. However, the power differential needs to be taken into account. That is the reason some individuals are keeping their heads down. We need to find some means whereby they can make submissions or whatever. This is not us saying this is terrible but we have been shown a number of bad practices that endanger the industry and place people in circumstances that are not good. That needs to be done. I think the Minister agreed with me, based on a nod he gave at the time, that we need a better model or framework in which there is greater representation for crew. I do not know exactly how that should happen but the Government is probably better placed to make that happen than either I am or others are.

Lastly, I accept the answer given to the question on ratios. It was presented to me that a choice was made by certain producers to have less experienced of staff in order to pay them less and thus people were in a more precarious situation. That claim has been denied but many Deputies have heard it from many sources. The issue must form part of the discussion the Government has with some of these stakeholders.