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

That would have to happen. Without putting too strong a term on it, I cannot speak for this committee, except at this moment in time when I am the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach. It would not quite be a demand, but it is as close to a demand as I can make. That is necessary, and we need it to be actioned. We can all get into the minutiae, and we have dealt with all these issues on some level before. I am very glad the stakeholder forum is happening and many of the details on which we have spoken here and previously will be brought up at the stakeholder forum. We will then need to find a means of actioning them. I understand that it is not always easy. There may be a more elegant way of dealing with some of the means through which the Department thought it could deal with this and constrain it in specific codes in section 481. I also understand that there is all the other legislation, employment frameworks, etc. On some level, it did work in the WRC, but it took a long time, and we need to find a better means of doing this. Many people had to go through an awful lot of pain in their own lives because they were blacklisted. I think Deputy Boyd Barrett was correct when he said that these people did not so much want the moneys now as much as they wanted to actually have work at the time.

I will put another issue out there. Initially, we also spoke to those on film sets and crews, where there was a fear about the ratios of experienced staff versus trainees. These are matters of accreditation in the area of training, and quality employment and training. They said that on some level it all falls down, because as soon as a trainee gets beyond being a trainee, they suddenly face into not actually being employed. At times, consideration was given by a huge number of producers to operating an imperfect ratio. There were even cases on a number of films where they had to refilm certain pieces, etc. We cannot know for certain whether that was on the basis of those ratios. That filming was even done outside of Ireland when the majority had been done here. That worried me. We are back to defining the term “quality employment and training”, as well as “enforcement”, which I understand is not easy.