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

------and I will not do so.

Let me put it this way. A prominent international actor who is also a producer sought to employ somebody here to work in transport on a movie and was informed by the Irish producer company that it could not have and was not willing to employ that person. This is clear evidence of a blacklist. Think about the consequence of that for this prominent international actor, all of the people whom actor knows and international investors who might be considering coming into this country. That is as serious as it gets. Unless the Government proactively resolves this, we have a serious problem and we had better acknowledge it.

The other day I met a well known playwright, probably one of Ireland's leading playwrights, with whom I am friendly. We were chatting about the conflict in the Abbey. I mentioned the raging battle that is going on inside the film industry and he said something very interesting. He said that in his experience, if one got a lot of creative people and people working in the arts in one room with a pot of money, the result was not pleasant. This was an interesting comment to hear from one of our leading playwrights and, when one thinks about it, a very disappointing comment to hear. One would expect that the arts is totally different from that, that it is the opposite of that, and that it is better than everywhere else in how people work together, how they co-operate and how they engage with each other. One would expect it is the best of any industry and sector. That is what one would hope for. That is what it should be. Art is supposed to be about the best of us, and instead we have a bitter toxic situation in the Irish film industry. It must be resolved. That forum has to happen.

Members should consider where this stands in the scale of things. We have just had a major national scandal over what was going on in the FAI leading to a clear-out of the chief executive, etc., because the chief executive lent the FAI €100,000. The annual subsidy from the State to the FAI is only €9 million. This was a major national scandal and has led to a complete clean-out of the FAI. Between section 481 tax relief and Irish Film Board or Screen Ireland funding, there is €100 million going into this industry every year. This puts the FAI in the ha'penny place. If the allegations that are being made have any substance, and there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest they may have, somebody has to adjudicate on all of that and it has to be independent. While it is not up to us, the Government, which is the funder of the industry, has to make that happen. What is more, a condition of giving out further funding of that scale has to be that the recipients respect the public who are funding them and agree to come into a forum where these issues will be resolved. Anything less is completely unacceptable.

The Minister states the Government decided that because different stakeholders were unwilling to go into a room with one another, it was not possible for them to talk, she could not have the forum, and we should just accept that. That is crazy. Is that the way we would have operated if the former CEO of the FAI had stated he would not come in to the Oireachtas committee and it should get lost, as some of the stakeholders have done? Would the public have accepted that? The Government would not have accepted it. It is totally unacceptable. This forum has to happen.

I was slightly worried by the Minister's response and I hope she will reconsider. I understood from engagements that I had with the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, in that regard that she was in favour of the forum happening and the only outstanding question was whether we had an independent chair. A couple of suggestions I would put forward, and these are not exhaustive, would be Mr. Kevin Duffy, the retired chair of the Labour Court, or possibly Mr. Brendan Hayes, the retired deputy chair. Members could have other suggestions but they should be persons who have experience in industrial relations and who will be genuinely independent in bringing people into a room and look at all of this.

It has to be a condition of further funding that the law is being applied and workers' right are not being abused. We have not got to the bottom of whether this is so, but let us ask ourselves a simple question. Could the Minister answer the question as to who the employees in the Irish film industry are? I suspect that the Government cannot answer that question. No one knows who the employees are because none of them has any rights. They do not exist. The vast majority of the workers do not have a contract of indefinite duration that is acknowledged by the people who receive the funding. They do not exist, even though the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 clearly applies to them. The Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, has accepted that this law applies and yet it is not being applied in the industry. Therefore, it has to happen. I do not believe further funding can be extended to this industry until it is clear that is happening.

I refer not only to future practice. We must establish the position of those who have been working. Today, we got testimony from people working 42 years in the industry, 25 years in the industry, etc. On the issue of blacklisting, there are ways to find this out. All of those workers have submitted their PPS numbers to me and the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty. Others will submit them. We can simply establish whether they have been blacklisted since they came in here. There cannot be too many people claiming they are not working in the industry all of whom are lying, but there is a way to find out. One can check their PPS numbers, their employment record, whether they have worked in the industry for years, who they worked for, whether those people were in receipt of public money and whether they have got rights as employees. These details can be established and we can find out who is telling the truth.

What we heard today from Screen Guilds of Ireland was shocking. When one of those workers, a master painter who has worked for 42 years in the industry, asks why he was sacked from a particular production with two other people and the answer from Screen Guilds of Ireland is because he is a troublemaker and he should have been doing his job, that is breaking the law. Where somebody who is sacked on that basis, his or her rights are being breached and the law is being broken. The people who did that are in receipt of public money, which is conditional on the provision of quality employment and training. That cannot be allowed to stand.

I want to make clear I not only want €100 million to go into the Irish film industry, I genuinely want €200 million to go into it. That has been my party's policy for many years. However, I do not believe a single cent more should go in until we know who are the trainees, who are the employees, whether there are proper pathways into the industry, and until we log, track and ensure that there is quality employment and training. Anything less is completely unacceptable. Is there recognition of service? If somebody who has worked in the industry for 25, 30 or 35 years does not have a job, a pension or any rights whatsoever, that is not acceptable. That is not quality employment and training and nobody can seriously suggest that it is. I have much more to say and just do not have time to say it.

We have a problem and the way to solve it is to convene the forum. Quite frankly, anybody who tells the Government, particularly if he or she is receipt of public money, that the person is not coming should be told he or she will not get a single cent more. One should bear in mind that we were given evidence at the Oireachtas joint committee by the people who were lobbying to continue the funding that there were 17,000 jobs. The Irish Film Workers Association and the GMB stated there were not 17,000 jobs, that there were 2,000 and that those jobs were not actual jobs but were completely precarious with no security.

Revenue looked into the claims of the two sides and found that the Irish Film Workers Association and the GMB union representations were the correct ones. There were only 2,000 jobs, of which only 900 were PAYE, and almost none of them are people who have any security from one job to the next. They can work in the industry for 20 years and then they are just gone. It is not acceptable and we now have evidence piling up. It was because of the campaigning of the workers who gave testimony today that the new guidelines were brought in and why we had the report. We have to take these things seriously and get to the bottom of them. Funding to the film industry has to be conditional on the application of the law and the upholding of workers' rights for the good of the industry, as I have explained. Otherwise, its international reputation will be absolutely shot if it seems that rights are being flouted like that and blacklisting and other sorts of completely unacceptable behaviour are rife in the industry.

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