Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 92, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following:“Report on section 481 Tax Relief

26.Within 6 months of the passing of this act, the Minister shall produce a report on section 481 Tax Relief and the social and economic impact of this expenditure particularly in relation to the provision of quality employment.”.

This amendment relates to the section 481 tax relief, which is designed to encourage and promote the film industry. It amounts to approximately €70 million a year, which is a substantial investment of public money in this industry. As I said to the Minister on Committee Stage, and I will repeat myself because this issue has become very controversial, I am very much in favour not only of maintaining the current level of public investment in film, but of dramatically increasing it. In fact, in our budget submission we proposed an additional €241 million in investment in arts generally, with a substantial amount going to film, although, obviously, to other arts as well. This level of investment would bring us towards the average expenditure in Europe, which we are well below. I stress this because there are some in the film industry who are not happy that I have questioned some of the matters surrounding this relief and some of the issues in the industry. However, I stress to them, and no doubt some of them will be watching this debate, that what I want is to strengthen the industry and to see more investment in it.

There are problems surrounding this relief, however. Indeed, there is a significant dispute raging in the film industry on a number of fronts linked to this relief. I will not go into some of them in great detail except to urge the Minister to take them seriously. A series of articles has been running, particularly in The Sunday Business Post, about fairly serious allegations of abuses of section 481 relief, court cases pertaining to same and very prominent film stars and so on accusing certain producer companies of significantly inflating their claims under section 481. I do not know the truth of these allegations but they indicate that there needs to be serious policing and very definite rules and regulations around these reliefs so they cannot be abused but rather do what they are supposed to do, that is, generate employment in the industry and generate a sustainable film industry. This is very important. As I said to the Minister, and I again stress this to all the people involved in this industry, we have a massive pool of talent in this country. We box way above our weight in literature, the arts and so on and we could do so to a much greater extent in film if there was more investment but also if we redesigned things a little.

The focus of this amendment is the issue of the requirement in section 481 that it provide "quality employment and training opportunities". That is the condition of availing of this tax relief and therefore is a legal requirement. The debate revolves around whether this is the case. To outline to the Minister some of the issues at stake, the number of employees, for example, is important. At the Joint Committee on Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, where this was discussed at the end of January, Screen Producers Ireland and the Irish Film Board said there were 17,000 whole-time equivalent jobs. Recently that figure has come down to about 3,000. That is a big difference, is it not? Let us be honest. The same amount of money is involved but now the number of jobs in the industry has gone from 17,000 to 3,000. When we consider that quite a few of those are in RTÉ, we begin to get a sense of how many are actually working in film.

This is a significant issue and it needs to be looked at. What are we getting back in terms of real jobs in this industry? What kind of jobs are they? Are they quality jobs? Will the Minister in his response to me tell me his definition of a quality job? What is quality employment? What is quality training? Legally, this relief is supposed to be dependent on these questions. To my mind, quality employment, at an absolute minimum, is adherence to employment law and EU directives on employment. For example, if a person has three short-term contracts for the same production company in the space of four years, that person is entitled to a contract of indefinite duration. That is not happening. Even though the same companies are getting the money and employing the same people, these employees are not getting contracts of indefinite duration.

That is the law. It is not up for debate but it is not being applied.

Bogus self-employment is also happening, which the Government has started to act on in other areas. There are objective criteria relating to this. Some people cannot simply be declared to be contractors if the character of their work and the nature of their relationship with the employer, the producer company in this case, is one of employee. Objective criteria need to be examined, which is important from a Revenue point of view. With this amendment, we are asking the Minister to look into these issues. Let us examine how many PAYE employees in the different sectors claim this relief as opposed to contractors and then examine the tax revenue from these two different groups. We will find there is a significant difference. If there is a PAYE employee in the same grade and doing the same job, the State gets back much more.

Workers were telling me that a PAYE worker in certain grades in transport, construction, etc., six-month contract pays €35,000 in tax but if the same person doing the same job is designated a as contractor, he or she pays €3,000 or €4,000 in tax. There are issues in this regard that need to be examined. This needs to be looked into and, critically, the industry forum that was recommended needs to be convened. All stakeholders could discuss what is quality employment and what are the conditions for availing of this tax relief.

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