Mr. John Arkins:

I might come in on that and on the idea of the employment test being met. I am a living testimony of the employment test. I have worked here for 28 years. The way it works in the film industry is that when you finish a production, the clock goes back to zero and you have no rights. You have no benefit from your service. I am a man of 58 years of age. I lost my job because I appeared here in Leinster House in 2018 to talk about what it is like to work in the film industry, as did 40 other men. I cannot get a job because I have no references from my 28 years of work. The people I have worked for refuse to give me a reference because they say I do not work for them. That is the impact on me, as a 58-year-old man in Ireland today, after working in a film industry where my employer has €4 billion to create quality employment. I have to hand copies of agreements that have governed my working life going back to 1994. I was promised a pension in 1994 but not one penny has been put into a pension scheme for any worker in the film industry.

I am one of the men involved in the WRC case. I was told to go to the WRC by Deputies in this building and I went and put in my case. The people I identified as my employers have said they are not my employer. They do not turn up. One employer has made €250 million within six years but he did not turn up. Even when he was subpoenaed by the Labour Court, he did not turn up. I have copies of statements from the representative body that produced a collective agreement stating that none of its members can have an employment relationship with any crew member, trainee or employee.

If there cannot be a relationship between an employer and an employee, there cannot be an industry. They are the two blocks an industry is built on. If I am making something and producing work, I will need a crew along that production line to make it. I will need to sell it, get something back from it, put that back into my business and industry and keep on building. That is how a business starts. I could bring before the committee a gentleman who worked in the industry for 44 years. The €4 billion has to be spent in his lifetime. He was told to get off the site and that he was not wanted, after 44 years. He too is a living testimony. We can prove the employment test is not working.