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

We need to have those things. One way to establish that would be - as I proposed in my amendment - by having a register of employees. If we can find out who is working in the industry, we can then gauge how we are doing. We can then say that we are putting in this amount of money and this is how many jobs we are creating. We can then ascertain if the number is improving year on year; if the quality of that employment is improving; and if the trainees are progressing or if they are trainees for a while and then dropping out of the industry because they cannot survive and have no future. These are things we need.

At one of the meetings I attended with officials from Revenue and the Department of Finance, the workers from the film industry actually showed that in the past there was a register of trainees. There is no longer such a register. We actually had some of these things in the past but we do not have them now. Why is that the case? If we did have them, we could know who the trainees are and could track if they are progressing from production to production so that we are developing the skills base of the industry. This has relevance when we talk about attracting inward investment.

Internationally, film production is ramping up very significantly with organisations such as HBO, Netflix, Amazon and others, but how much of this stuff are we getting? I think we are not getting enough and part of the reason we are not getting enough is that there is not enough stability in the skills pool. When they come here it needs to be clear to that them we have the infrastructure and people skilled in all these areas. However, it is too precarious for the workers. It is also too fragmented in terms of what potential investors might be looking for. We need those registers of employees and we need direct PAYE employment.

This issue was discussed with the officials from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and I know they are looking at it. The Irish Film Board should be expanded. It needs stakeholders from across the industry and not just the producers. Of course, we need producers on the Irish Film Board, but we also need workers on the board and people who will evaluate how the money is being allocated, and the extent to which the State is getting a good return based on criteria such as employment, building up infrastructure and cultural impact.

All of these factors need to be assessed independently and not just by producers. We need to look at issues like potential conflicts of interest whereby producers on the film board are lending money to their own production companies. I am not saying that those producers should not be on the board but we must be very careful about this kind of thing. As I understand it, there was a very substantial revamp of the film board in Britain. The British got rid of their film board and created a film commission which has a much wider industry stakeholder involvement, including workers as well as producers, performers and others.

I hope to hear more from the Minister on this and I also believe that the Revenue Commissioners and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection have a role to play in this area. Revenue and the relevant Departments must work together to progress these matters, which would be to the benefit of the entire industry. It would also be very much to the benefit of those who work in the industry to have direct employment and the full application of all of their employment rights, which many would say is not happening currently. It would also help to draw in more investment from some of the big international producers of film and television in the audiovisual sector.

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