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

This amendment concerns the approximately €80 million in tax relief that is given to film producers every year under section 481. It is a considerable relief to support the development of the film industry. However, as the Minister knows, the specific condition attaching to this relief is that, in order to access the relief, the film producers must provide quality employment and training and must comply with all relevant legislation on workers' rights. They must also take responsibility for their employees and trainees.

My amendment is asking for the Government to investigate with a review, to be done in a very short time, as to whether that is happening. I have also added a particular reference to the question of acknowledgement of service of employees who have worked for those same film producers over many years.

That acknowledgement is required under fixed-term workers contract law. Despite the Minister's efforts and mine, and despite the declaration forms that film production companies are supposed to fill in and in which they must solemnly commit to give quality employment, take responsibility for employees and comply with all employment law, they are brazenly flouting that law, refusing to acknowledge the legal rights of their employees and blacklisting out of the industry those who attempt to assert their rights. They have already blacklisted a significant cohort of people. They are signing the declaration, which is the condition for getting the relief, and committing to the requirements, but they then walk into the Labour Court and the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to state publicly that they are doing none of that.

All the Minister has to do to establish that the relief is being abused, the law is being broken and rights are being denied is cross-check the declarations given by these producer companies with the statements they are making in the Labour Court and the WRC when the workers engaging in their film productions, which are supported by public money, attempt to assert their rights. Workers recently attempted to assert their rights around the issue of collective agreements made with film producer companies.

I will provide evidence to back up what I am saying. A letter went to the Minister this morning from representatives of the workers. Its two pages briefly summarise the situation and I appeal to the Minister to read it carefully. I will cite a submission to the Labour Court, dated 19 September, from a film producer company that has got a great deal of money for many years. Workers engaged in the company's productions took a case over a breach of a collective agreement. According to the producer, which signed the Minister's declaration, the claims were raised on behalf of a number of individuals who were previously engaged on productions associated with the respondent, that being, the producer. The producer stated that neither this nor any of the other complainants were its employees. It accepted that they were associated with and employed on productions funded with section 481 reliefs, but in an Orwellian twist, it claimed they were not its employees. It went on to say that workers such as the complainant were engaged by designated activity companies, DACs, which were set up specifically for each production if and when commissioned, that there were no employment contracts with the respondent and that any employment relationship existed between the employee and the specific DAC. It claimed that, as such, each DAC was the employer and there was no continuity of service where an individual was employed by different DACs. The worker in this case had worked for that film producer, who gets money from the State on the basis of complying with the fixed-term workers Act, for ten years. This is a flagrant breach of the declaration.

On 6 October, the CEO of Screen Producers Ireland gave evidence in the Labour Court in a case involving another producer. She stated that she would give evidence before the court that there was no possible basis, having regard to the realities of the sector, on which a relationship of employment could be said to have existed between the parties, those being the employees who worked on the film production and the film producer, which got the section 481 relief on the specific requirement that it be the employer and acknowledge all the rights of the employees. This could not be more blatant.

The Minister has published a declaration that commendably requires producers to give commitments. They sign the declaration, take the money from him and then publicly go to a State body and say none of these legislative measures apply to them because they do not provide employment to anyone and they do not have employees at all. The next day, they return to the Minister and tell him to give them some money because they will provide employment. The Minister cannot let this stand. Will he investigate these cases seriously and withdraw section 481 relief from companies that are abusing him and the taxpayer?

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