Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I move amendment No. 51:

In page 77, between lines 22 and 23, to insert the following:

32.Within three months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil, on the functioning of section 481 relief for investment in films, particularly in relation to the degree to which it is meeting the requirement to meet “quality employment and training” and to examine whether film producer companies in receipt of the relief are hiding behind short lived designated activity companies (DAC) to avoid taking responsibility for workers employed on film productions supported by the relief.”.

This is an issue we discuss pretty much every year at the Finance Bill. It relates to section 481 tax relief for investment in films and the question of whether the condition of quality employment and training, which is a condition of the granting of this relief to film producer companies, is actually being met. The Minister has been helpful in responding to our concerns on this issue over the last number of years.

He has attempted to tighten the conditionality regarding the quality employment and training provisions of the relief, most notably requiring an undertaking in respect of quality employment for the recipients of the relief, on foot of the concerns raised by film workers and by me and others over the years. However, the problem is that there is very good reason to believe that this has not been enough to deal with the practice of getting around the requirements for quality employment and training by recipients of the section 481 relief.

The Minister will be aware that when this question is raised, whether it is in this committee, in arts committees, in debates in the Dáil or between the different players in the debate about the section 481 relief, the film producers who are the recipients and their representatives in Screen Producers Ireland, in particular, will say that it is a project-to-project thing so one cannot really expect security of employment and income because that is just the nature of the industry. They say they will do their best to comply with the law and so forth, but that one cannot expect security of employment. I do not accept the case that just because something is project-to-project, the workers who work in an industry for decades are basically, due to the way the industry works, only as good as not even their last job but only as good as the producer deems them to be at the moment in which they apply for their next job, even though they may have worked in the industry for decades. That is not fair. I do not believe it is in line with the working time directive and I certainly do not believe it is in line with the requirement under section 481 to have quality employment and training. It is not quality employment and training.

A person can be a painter, stage crew or somebody who is below the line, as they are sometimes referred to patronisingly by some elements in the film industry. The "below the line" workforce is the terribly insulting term that is often trotted out in these discussions. There are the above-the-line people, the flashy people perhaps, and there are the below-the-line people.