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

I will be extremely brief. On the SPV structure, the problem is that it appears and it disappears. That is a problem in terms of people's employment rights. We need to re-examine that. I just want to make that clear. I am not going to elaborate the point as the officials understand it. It is a particular structure. There are reasons at one level that we should have it but it causes a problem in terms of the normal relationship between an employer and an employee that should exist.

On the issue the Minister mentioned regarding people having the right to be freelancers and so on, my response to that is "Yes" and "No". There is a control test. There are documents which have been produced and I probably have one of them among my papers. There are rules about the way employment, as against self-employment, is defined. It is not a case of somebody saying he or she is a freelancer or a lone trader. If a person's relationship to an employment ticks certain boxes that person is an employee. That person is not a lone trader or a self-employed entrepreneur. It is not accurate to say that. These issues are set out in a code for practice for determining employment or self-employment. We need to examine this area.

I understand that in some jurisdictions, such as France, at the beginning of a production officials from the equivalent of Revenue and the state ask the people involved what they do, what are their terms and conditions and they set out the way they will be categorised. That is how it is done. They go through every single employee and set out the way it is defined. I will not go through them. The officials will be aware of them.

In fairness to the Government, in response to campaigning in other areas such as construction, it has taken this issue on board, and the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, has stated we need to deal with issues such as bogus self-employment. There has been an acknowledgement in other areas, particularly in the construction sector, that must be dealt with. There are at least allegations, and I believe credible ones, that this is happening in the film industry. Therefore, it must be examined. That is not unreasonable. That is how we get to the truth. In any of these situations some people will allege one thing and others will allege another. Our job, as public representatives and as representatives of the Government, is to find the facts, establish what the rules and the law are, ensure they are being applied and to make it clear to the stakeholders in the industry that these are the rules and this is the law. The law must be complied with. If we have to debate whether we should change laws in certain circumstances, let us do that. I am simply arguing, as are I believe many people in the industry, that must be applied.

Some information is being gathered and some has been remitted to Revenue. However, we need more information about who is working, what they are doing and so on. We need to know what sort of tax remittances we are getting. I will not elaborate the point further. The point has been made.

I believe the board should be larger. I am glad the Government is talking about that. However, it is important to have workers on it and a good diversity and not just one type of board member, for want of a better description. We need to examine that.

See this speech in context