Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The PACT-Equity agreement and intellectual property rights are contentious. The simple contention is that the PACT-Equity agreement is far superior. That is what workers want. I think our guests know that is what they want. Why not just give it to them? As simply as that, I ask the question. Why not just give it to them? It is a better deal and I do not understand why our guests would resist it.

On the point about film crews, it may be okay for some people to be freelance. That might be true for the heads of department that Mr. Lowe has described. It might be okay to be freelance for certain creative people. I put it to our guests that they are reflecting the viewpoint of a particular layer of people that arrangement suits. Mr. Lowe said that Element Pictures employs 46 people, many on a permanent basis. I suspect that if he told those people tomorrow they were on fixed-term contracts and did not have any security of employment, they would not be very happy about it. On one level, Mr. Lowe needs a group of permanent employees. Dare I use the terms "white collar" and "blue collar" here? I do not like that phraseology but that is what it looks like.

It looks like we can give secure employment to the white-collar workers but not the general operatives, for want of a better term. I am referring to the stage crew, transport workers and construction workers. They are telling us that freelance work does not suit them and that they need some kind of security. It is great for freelancers who might work for Element Pictures one week, Metropolitan the next week and another company the week after – good for them – but it is not so good for the person who makes the props, the driver, the stagehand and other such workers.

Mr. Lowe is saying that the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 just does not apply, even though one signs a declaration stating one will comply with it. He is actually saying it does not apply and cannot. There may be two or three categories excepted in the fixed-term workers directive but film is not one of them. Therefore, there is a problem. Even in the Abbey Theatre, there are certain people who have permanent jobs to make it work. They are not operating on a project-to-project basis. There are others who come in, such as the director of lighting or sound crew, who might also do this work somewhere else, but there is a permanent crew that makes things work. Some of the people I am talking about – Mr. Lowe knows who they are as they have worked for Element Pictures and Metropolitan time and again – are telling us they cannot get back into the film industry, even though Element Pictures says it is looking for crew. This is because the film producer companies do not want to acknowledge they have some obligation towards those who have worked for them time and again. That has to be addressed.