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

Go raibh maith agaibh. A huge amount has been dealt with already by this committee. An awful lot of the recommendations were on the basis that a significant number of people came forward and spoke about the film industry. We have all seen the positives of section 481. These may have been unintended consequences, but what we were told and what many people spoke about and put in the public domain during the committee hearings, and even before that, was the fact that certain people who highlighted particular issues were blacklisted or blackballed - use whatever term you want - and because it was a project-by-project type industry, it was possible to do that, whether it was the head of department who made the determination on who got called and whatever else. There was an element of difference for many other industries. People came forward to say they believed they should have been able to avail of the protections of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 and that was not the case. Whatever about a he said-she said-we said scenario, while there have been a number of findings regarding all those particular issues and a significant amount of money has been awarded, the fact is that the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, finding sort of reinforces what has been said. I am of the belief that there would not have been a stakeholder forum only that there is a belief that there is an issue and it needs to be addressed.

I will go back to the stakeholder forum. Obviously, it is a one-day event. The Department is allowing for written submissions. What is the timeframe with regard to that? How exactly is that going to be enacted? I would accept some element of what the Minister for Finance said in the sense that we will not be able to catch all the particular issues by using a tax code. However, I do think we need to have some element of protections. On some level, I am assuming that the same issues are going to come up at the stakeholders forum and on that basis, they have to be put on somebody's desk. Then, it is a matter of how we deal with it and ensure that the industry does provide for quality employment and training and creates something that is long term and provides the cultural dividend and all the rest of it.

We are also going to have to create a scenario, which I accept cannot be by ministerial decree, whereby we have frameworks and agreements, whether that relates to contractual issues or copyrighting or to crew contracts project by project. How exactly will this work as regards the stakeholder forum? There is not much point if people make fine points that are recorded somewhere and people write submissions and they do not go anywhere.