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

The title of the report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is The Arts Matter. Politicians are quick to say they believe the arts matter whenever the issue is discussed, but when one actually looks at the level of support the State gives to the arts, it suggests that in reality the political system does not think the arts matter. It does not treat the arts as if they matter because the level of funding for the arts is abysmal. There is no gainsaying this. The level of funding in this country is well below the EU average which, as people in this Chamber well know, is 0.6% of GDP. In Ireland we are talking about 0.1%. Considering how this country's international reputation at every level rests to a very significant extent on our achievements in the arts - poetry, literature, theatre, music and other art forms - this is a pretty serious indictment of the political system's lack of commitment to the arts. As Deputy Ó Snodaigh intimated, and as others here have said before, people are very quick to jump into photographs with artists, to turn up for the big press occasions and to go to the high-profile events. The level of support given to the arts, however, is abysmal and the plight of the artist is even more abysmal.

The levels of poverty and precariousness and just the struggle to survive among artists in this country are extreme and do not suggest that the political system really thinks artists and people who work in the arts, including theatre, literature and film, the latter of which I will discuss and have discussed on many occasions, matter when it comes down to brass tacks. The facts in this regard are stark and were fairly well aired by Theatre Forum earlier this year in the Dáil arising out of its survey, which told us that 80% of people surveyed exist in a precarious state of employment. They do not know from job to job whether they will have another job. How do they get mortgages? How can they even be sure they will be able to pay their rent? What about healthcare? Of course, artists are not the only people in precarious situations; precarity in employment and lack of income and employment security are huge problems in many sectors. However, the arts is very much one such sector, in which 80% of workers, according to the people surveyed, were in a precarious position. Of PAYE jobs in the performing arts, 60% pay less than average industrial earnings, with the survey finding that the annual wage of two thirds of those surveyed was under €23,000. The artists, the people who work in the creative field and in the arts generally, are treated very badly.

Just before I got up to speak, I was scribbling down something that was sent to me. It gives an indication of one particular sector. I have made the point again and again that the Government needs to take quality employment seriously. I have argued that film funding, which amounts to €80 million per year, and more if Screen Ireland is added in terms of tax relief, be conditional on giving real rights to workers in the film industry. I will quote to the House three clauses from a contract for a film crew member working on a film being made now, a film that will almost certainly be in receipt of section 481 tax relief. This is what film crew have to put up with:

Clause 10: Your working hours will vary depending upon the needs of the film as the company shall notify you from time to time. On each date on which you are required to provide your services you agree to make yourself available to service the requirements of a normal ten-hour shooting day plus one hour for lunch or a continuous 9.5-hour day with half an hour for lunch.

This is in black and white and a clear breach of the Organisation of Working Time Act.

Clause 5: The provisions of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977-2007 shall not apply to any termination of your engagement, consisting only of completion of specified purpose.

One cannot do this. One cannot tell people that the Unfair Dismissals Act does not apply to them, but this is what one must sign up to to get a job in the Irish film industry. These films are funded by and completely dependent on public money. The contract goes on:

You will have no entitlement to be paid your salary during a period of your absence due to illness except at the discretion of the company.

This is another clear breach of workers' entitlements. These are the sorts of contracts flying around in the Irish film industry.

What are we going to do about this? I have been talking about this for two years. The people who publicly came out and blew the whistle on this have been effectively blacklisted out of the industry. That is what is going on and nobody seems to want to do anything about it. It is a case of not upsetting the applecart. It must stop. That is the film industry but, of course, that is just one example of the general contempt with which artists, performers and other people working in the arts are treated.

What can we do about that? In the area of film, let us do what the Indecon report of 1995 said we should do. If we are going to put a lot of public money into the Irish film industry, it should be directed towards creating companies of scale. State aid to the arts is absolutely necessary and should, in my opinion, double or significantly increase. EU directives on state aid to the arts clearly state that it must be given on condition of creating viable companies of scale with a permanent pool of employees.

Lest anyone tries to throw dust in people's eyes, I want to stress that, when I or workers in the arts refer to a permanent pool of employees, that does not mean that those workers expect to be employed 365 days a year even if there are no films being made or work to be done. That is not what they are saying and it is not what I am saying. Those workers should not be in a completely precarious position from project to project.

Everybody accepts that there is a project-to-project character to work in film and many of the arts, but workers should carry over some rights and entitlements from one production to another, particularly when the employers are often the same from one project to another and are in receipt of large amounts of public money. People who work in the arts should not be in a constantly precarious position when the same producers are getting money again and again but setting up different designated activity companies, DACs, to shield themselves from any responsibility for their employees. That is what is going on. Producers are telling the Government to give them money on which they can claim tax relief because they will create quality employment. When workers ask those producers for their rights, they are told that the producer is not the employer and that the worker is employed by a DAC that does not exist anymore because it finished when the previous film did. That is unacceptable.

I have focused on the issues in the film industry that reflect a more general problem. We could employ thousands of artists, performers, writers and so on, give them a living income that would let them pursue their creative endeavours and ask them in exchange to work in education, mental health and schools for a number of days or weeks per year. That way the artists would give something back to and enrich different sectors of our society in the areas of mental health, community projects in disadvantaged areas and so on. In exchange, those artists would get a living income so they would have some sort of security of employment that would allow them to pursue their arts and live a proper existence where they could pay their rent and maybe get a mortgage and so on. The artists are the people who produce the arts sector. If we do not treat them properly, we are not acting on the principle that the arts matter.

I appeal to the Minister to recognise those points and honour the artists, creative workers and people who work in those industries, including shooting crews. They deserve respect and proper treatment.

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