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

There are different aspects to these amendments but all of them revolve around the critical question of quality employment and training, whether it is for actors, writers, directors, performers or crew. I hope the Minister is hearing, because we certainly heard at the budget scrutiny committee where we examined this matter in detail, and it is a matter I have been raising at every Finance Bill for as long as I can remember, that whatever Screen Producers Ireland, SPI, may be telling the Minister and his Department, the actors, writers, performers, directors and crew are not happy. Whatever he is being told, he needs to realise that is not reflecting the view of the majority of people who work in the industry and make it happen. Yes, a relatively small group of producers are the major recipients of section 481 relief of approximately €100 million a year, which is a great deal of money.

If I look at the costing for the change in section 481, the Minister as saying this will be an extra €53 million. I stress that we all want to see a great deal more money being put into film production and the arts, but if we put that much money in, we have an obligation to ensure the conditions of section 481 are being met with regard to quality employment and training, not just because the Oireachtas has put this in the Finance Bill but because the Minister is required to do so under state aid rules from the European Union. There are very strict conditions around state aid for the audiovisual film industry and that is where the quality employment and training issue comes in around what is called the industry development test. There has to be an industry and it has to deliver quality employment and training, and the Minister has been told, as have previous Ministers and as has the Department, again and again by the majority of people who work in this industry that those tests are not being met.

I ask that the Minister might also consider it or think about it given something that has happened between this Finance Bill and the previous one, namely, the RTÉ scandal. There was a governance structure in RTÉ, which is also in the audiovisual industry, which we discovered was an absolute mess. To cut a long story short, that mess revolved around the fact that a very small number of people were getting massive salaries but a very significant number of people in the organisation were bogus self-employed, on much lesser terms and conditions, and so on and so forth. If there were problems in RTÉ, which we have now rectified, and while we all want to keep RTÉ going, we want public service broadcasting, and we recognised there was a serious problem in governance, I tell the Minister that the problems in the film industry are multiples of that because there is no governance. It is a self-regulated industry and I have to say that the responses of the Minister last night were very worrying in that regard.

This was because, first of all, there was the usual trope about this bit is not my Department, it is the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, this bit is ours, and this bit is the Department of Finance, where the buck is passed from one silo to another. Nobody is really responsible but the figure is €100 million and rising. That is not good enough. If the Minister does not want another RTÉ blowing up in his face or does not want what is happening in the United States with the strike that has been going on for a year, I seriously suggest that he start listening, and I am appealing to him to do so and to do something about this. The fact is there is no governance or enforcement to ensure compliance with these conditions.

I will give an example of why I am particularly worried. Last night, as the Minister knows, Equity said it wants the Pact Equity Cinema Films Agreement because, without it, Irish actors, writers and performers are working on lesser conditions, often on the same productions here in Ireland with people who are on the Pact Equity Cinema Films Agreement. They are doing the same job but on lesser terms and conditions because they do not have the benefit of the agreement. The Minister said last night that some of the actors perhaps want that because they are not as profitable and would prefer not to have the PACT Equity. That is straight out of the SPI playbook. I suspect that came in a communication from SPI and is its narrative. I can tell the Minister from and on behalf of Equity, because I talked to the organisation again this morning and it was very alarmed by these comments, and in any event the Minister has probably received the emails himself, that the trade union said it had voted twice in 2021 and the actors said overwhelmingly that they wanted the Pact Equity Cinema Films Agreement. Letters have gone to all of the relevant Departments on this issue, and the union has asked that I ask the Minister to examine very closely what it has said in response to the narrative coming from Screen Producers Ireland. I appeal to the Minister to do that but, to cut a long story short, it is simply not true. The actors want the Pact Equity Cinema Films Agreement.

There is a low budget option in the Pact Equity Cinema Films Agreement but there is a lot of scope for that to be abused. I believe the Minister may have received this communication that in one recent co-production, an Irish producer informed Equity that they wanted to use the low budget option, and according to Equity, when it examined this and received word through its colleagues, there was no registration with PACT Equity of the low-budget production, which is very worrying. In other words that low-budget option was being exploited by the producers to give lesser terms and conditions again. There is a very clear and consistent drive by the producers to give lesser contracts and lesser pay and conditions, and so on and so forth.

Critically, on the issue of buyout contracts, where performers sign away the rights of their residuals, the EU directives are clear on this: these should be the exception and not the rule. In Ireland, they are the rule and not the exception. That is what is going on and actors, writers and performers are in a very vulnerable position because if you want to get on a film, you are told to sign this contract which has been drawn up by accountants to have a legal wording that gets around the directive in a way that is nominally compliant but, in reality, forces workers to sign up to contracts that are far less than what their counterparts in the UK or the US have. When I say that they are drawn up by accountants, I mean that they are actually drawn up by accountants. I will not name names but look at the personnel who are running Screen Producers Ireland. As Equity put it, the most creative thing in the Irish film industry is the accountancy, and even that is a worrying thing.

My second point is in respect of the crew. Again, to cut a long story short, the people who are getting the money are the film producers on the basis of providing quality employment and training, and they are going in every time a worker who works on a production takes a case to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. These are the self-same producers who put their hands out to the Minister and to the public for section 481 relief, for that money, saying again and again that they will provide quality employment and training. They then march into the WRC and state they do not have any employees. Will the Minister please explain that to me?

I know what the answer will be, that it is up to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Can the three relevant Departments not get together and just find out the truth about this? They do not have to take my word for it but just find the truth out about it. Do what I did a couple of weeks ago because I have been receiving reports about this for the past few years. I decided to go to the WRC and look at it and see it for myself, and I saw it. IBEC marched in on behalf of one of the main film producers, in fact the biggest film producer in this country and the biggest recipient, because the film producer would not turn up.

According to the crew, how they got away with not turning up or why they did not turn up was because they said they were afraid they would have to perjure themselves if they gave evidence. What the case revolves around is who the employer is. The worker goes in and says he or she was employed by them. They do not turn up and they say they are not the respondent. The designated activity company, DAC, that no longer exists is the respondent, even though the producer set up the DAC, so they send in IBEC, which is very odd, to say that its member is not the respondent and, as a result, there is no case. That cannot continue.

We have to have a situation where the service of people who have worked ten, 15, 20, 25, 30 years is valued. I met one painter who had been in the industry for 40 years. He is just gone now, never to be employed again. He was a set-painter. I witnessed a scene in the audiovisual room with film producers present. When that worker asked why he was terminated from the industry, somebody who worked for one of the bodies that is linked to the producers said it was because he was a troublemaker. It was said in front of about 40 of us that he was a troublemaker. If a boss thinks somebody is a troublemaker, that might mean they are a union activist, for example, or that they assert their rights. However, even if someone is a troublemaker, there is supposed to be a thing called due process. As the departmental officials know well, there is a whispering-rumour-smear campaign going on against the whistleblowers who came in here, but they never had due process. They were blacklisted on the basis of whispers and hearsay. That is not right, but it can happen in the Irish film industry because there is no industry and there are no employers.

Do members know that there is very little film production happening in the country right now? Do they know why? It is because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Does that not tell us something? Of course we want co-productions with the American film industry, but it is a bit telling, after who knows how many billions have gone in over the past 20 years, that when the US film industry shuts down, all of a sudden there is no Irish film industry. There are no employees. Nobody has a job, but we have put in billions. The Government wants to put in more, but we do not have an industry that is supposed to be developed, as a matter of law, on the basis of the EU directives on state aid and the legislation. It disappears overnight. All of a sudden, there is no film industry. That cannot continue. I ask the Minister to address that.