Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

My intention is to oppose the section. I have outlined issues but a number of questions remain unanswered about this section. It would be helpful if the Minister of State was willing to publish the legal advice, but that usually does not happen. Maybe she will explain the basis on which it was determined to reassign the functions of the controller to the courts, because that is one of the major changes in this legislation. We have all seen reports over the years about how full the courts are. While the Minister of State stated that there has only been one case in the past 20 years, that is not to say that there will not be in the future. There could be a spate of cases, and the courts, as far as I am aware, do not have that expertise in place. It means that it would have to be ensured that the courts are a fit-for-purpose arbitration mechanism, whereas they are not at the moment. There is also the cost. If performers have to seek to vindicate their rights through the courts, there is a cost and a time factor too. While the Bill mentions a six-month period, the court proceedings are on top of that, so we are talking about quite a number of years.

In all of this, the preference is that people do not end up in arbitration, in court or anything else. There needs to be some mechanism that nearly forces those who are at odds with each other into arbitration. If it is to do with rights and the loss of earnings by performers, we need a mechanism that can and should be much quicker. The success of the controller being in place is that people have not had to so far resort too often to referring matters to the controller. Why are we changing something? If it is not broken, do not fix it. We can amend the controller and add to its powers and functions, and what adjudication and findings it can make, but I am still not sure why the change is happening. That is a key issue.

I might as well say on this section that I will come back on Report Stage with a number of additional amendments. Many are based on the summary that RAAP has provided, the detailed consideration it has given to this Bill and suggestions it has made to ensure that, when this Act is passed, it is the best possible legislation to deal with licensing bodies, producers, recorders, performers, and the collection of fees.

Section 208 of the Act should be changed to clarify that the right of performance is a right shared with producers and, unless agreed otherwise between the parties, that shall be 50% of revenues. That is a justifiable and documented cost of collection. It should retain and amend the role of the controller to determine disputes under the section and add a provision specifying that the calculation of the share of the individual performance will be carried out by a licensing body for performance rights with certain necessary credentials. In the event that there is more than one body and they cannot agree on which will conduct the calculations to provide for an application to the controller to determine which shall exercise the role, taking certain relevant matters into account, the third amendment would provide for an addition to section 208 of the Act that any licensing body registered for performers' property rights may, on renewal of its registration, demonstrate to the controller that it complies with the conditions laid down in the digital Single Market directive. It would extend its remit to cover performers who are not represented by a licensing body and, upon doing so, it may represent such a performer.

The conditions attached to this role include the obligation on a licensing body to maintain procedures for negotiation of equitable division of costs and benefits with any other licensing body that may satisfy the Commission. The fourth change was a minor change to the proposed wording of the Bill in section 4. I will read it here because I will deal with something else in section 4. It is to bring the legislation into line and full compliance with the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-265/19. Given that a major stakeholder has invested so much time in producing these amendments, I hope that on Report Stage at the very least we will be able to give it consideration. We have already teased out some of it but I will have further wording. The key at this stage is that I would oppose section 3, given that I have not seen the necessity to go to court in this instance. We have a system in place that could be beefed up to ensure that it is fit for purpose if there are problems with its mechanisms so far. We do not need to reassign the functions from the controller of intellectual properties to the court.