Ms Liz Murray:

We can only give anecdotal evidence. Currently, 40 people have been displaced from their employment. No reasons were given, although we suspect it has something to do with us looking for rights of entitlement under employment legislation. Members of the association, my colleague included, appeared before an Oireachtas joint committee on culture in 2018 and six months after that, he was displaced, as were the other workers who made the case.

The employers have not turned up at the Labour Court to discharge their burden of proof. They have made submissions to the Labour Court and the WRC to say they do not employ anybody. Their representative body made a submission to the Labour Court stating that the structure of section 481 prohibits an employment relationship between the parties. I cannot see how that is the case, because how else can the industry development test be met?

As for production companies, nobody has a crew until somebody starts a film. There are no crews in any of the production companies in Ireland until somebody makes a film. They then go into the marketplace and hire a crew through, say, props heads of department and construction heads of department. Our people are on the construction end in set craft. A construction manager is hired and he or she rings the crew members and asks whether they are available and can come in. That is how it goes. The production companies pay the crew and when the film is finished, they are laid off. If the crew members are lucky enough to be able to claim from the Department of Social Protection, that is what they do until somebody else looks for them, notwithstanding the fact they have might worked extensively with one employer. Mr. Arkins, for example, spent 20 years with one employer.