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

I am simply relaying what I have been told. The point is this needs to be investigated. That is all I am saying. It is an allegation but it needs to be investigated. The committee has gone as far as to write to the European Union to ask it to investigate the matter. The EU directive is clear on these issues, that under fixed-term workers legislation, there should not be the use of successive multiple fixed-term contracts. That is the whole point of the directive. Similarly, buyout contracts should be the exception, not the rule. They are the rule, however, in the Irish film industry and that means the benefits and profits that may derive from workers' performances and so on accrue to the producer companies and, importantly, the State gets nothing out of it. It puts in all the investment but it does not get anything from that investment.

As regards quality employment and training - I will elaborate on this in my next contribution - the committee was told the employment relationship does not survive the designated activity company, DAC, that is, the company that is set up for the purposes of a single film, even though the same producers are setting up successive DACs and the same workers are working in them for years but they never accumulate or have their rights vindicated in terms of their service to the industry. One can see parallels with RTÉ at the moment. We have been told there are 500 cases currently of people who have been working again and again for RTÉ and that these are instances of bogus self-employment, or that is being seriously investigated.

We are asking the Government to take this report and the allegations very seriously. This involves a lot of money. In addition, we are asking for the creation of a forum with all stakeholders and all Departments involved to objectively and independently scrutinise these issues. The Minister of State does not have to accept what I am saying. The forum, however, which was agreed upon after a committee recommended the same in 2014 but it never happened, should be established as a matter of urgency.

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