Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That all sounds very good but the reality is that some €7 billion has been given to the industry in the past 15 years in tax breaks, which is very generous. Although I do not disagree with that if it is performing the function it set out to perform, which is to give training and to nurture homegrown talent instead of abusing workers' rights, then it is absolutely the right thing to do. However, what we find in reality is that there is a very high degree of abuse of the workers within the industry and, in some cases, tax breaks are being given to companies which do not even film in Ireland, which cannot be legitimate. We need better oversight than what the Minister has described, whereby the Revenue Commissioners demand certain certificates and criteria and the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht gets them to sign a form that says this, that or the other, while there is no actual oversight of the administration of the scheme. As we have seen, and the Minister will be discussing this with other Deputies later, there is a gross abuse of workers' rights taking place across all industries at the moment. If one industry does it, they are all going to copy that because they seem to be able to get away with it.

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