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

To pre-empt everything I am going to say, I am personally and politically committed to public funding for the film industry and for arts and culture in general. I am one of the most vocal, although not the only one because there are many others, in arguing every year that we should put more investment into film, arts and culture. I will do it again this year. I am in favour of significantly increasing investment in the Irish film industry. To be honest, I think we could be doing much more with the talent we have here. This is at every level, including acting, writing, crew and set construction. Just name the area and I think we are bursting with talent here.

I do not think, though, that we are fully reaching our potential and this is because of what is going on in the industry. This is an industry where many people go into putting its productions together. Let us start with the actors, performers and writers represented by Equity. I think most people would accept this is a pretty important group in terms of the production of films. I honestly ask the officials to read what these people said about section 481 in the Equity submission. I will refer to a few lines from that submission. Reference was made to the exclusion of new and emerging independent producers and the concentration of industry power within a small number of players working against a competitive and innovative sector. Additionally, mention was made of potential abuse of the tax credit through a range of practices, including internal pricing and artificially depressed income strategies. It was also said that the flouting of national and international copyright legislation was creating an absurd situation whereby one arm of government was supporting organisations in breach of the State's own legislation.

This was the submission from Equity and this is serious. We do not have to accept that the organisation is correct, but, my God, we all have a responsibility to investigate this allegation. I am serious. If this were not true before this week, it is seriously true after what we have heard about RTÉ. Let us think about what it is that has generated the anger in respect of RTÉ. It is that huge amounts of public money were involved in instances of creative accounting. This was a phrase, by the way, also used by Equity. Its representatives said the most creative thing in the Irish film industry was the accountancy practice. This is what those representatives said. We have seen such creative practices in RTÉ as well. Let us look at the fury in this regard. I am honestly asking the officials and the Government to think about RTÉ. If this is happening, and I am not asking them to accept it is happening, we have a responsibility to find out about it.

This is because it is going to blow up in all of our faces if it is happening. We were asked again and again to investigate and we did not get to the bottom of this with independent, objective and forensic assessment of the claims and counterclaims, and of course there are claims and counterclaims. Let us make one point absolutely clear. I heard it being said that the forum cannot turn into an industrial relations mechanism and, therefore, we cannot have a forum. I have heard this being said. Let me make it completely clear that even the people who are saying they are being blackballed said today that they will deal with their own cases individually. They do not want the forum for that reason. They want it to deal with the systemic problems in the industry. That is what they said and they are dealing with their cases.

To inform the House, everybody who avails of section 481 must sign a declaration. I will let the Minister of State know about this situation. She should be aware of what is happening here. Some of these cases were taken to the WRC. The recipients of section 481 tax credits came in and said it was not them who employed the people concerned, but the DAC. The WRC did not know what to do with that situation and, essentially, said it could not hear the case because these people were not the employer. This was the outcome even though - this is the point - they came into the committee and said that although they were not the employer, they knew that the people taking the cases worked on the films where these recipients of section 481 had set up the DACs. Those recipients said they knew the people taking the cases but that they were not, technically, their employer.

This issue is going back to the WRC. It is important for the Minister of State to know about it. The people involved in this case went to the High Court recently. The judge there quashed the WRC ruling in respect of this case on the grounds that these people did not get a fair hearing. They did not get a fair hearing because the case was thrown out due to the representatives of Screen Producers Ireland, SPI, going into the WRC, representing the film production companies, to state that the people involved in the case were not employees. The SPI representatives then confirmed a point for me when I asked them about fixed-term workers. The Minister of State quoted the relevant legislation in this regard.

I asked them if they could produce one worker who had gained a contract of indefinite duration in the whole of the film industry funded by section 481. The representative told me it was not possible to do so because there is no such person. These workers do not exist. The SPI representative acknowledged the point being made by the Irish Film Workers Association and said the employment relationship does not survive the DAC. This means there are no jobs in the film industry after production has finished. There are jobs during the production of a film but then there are no jobs. People have worked for the same three or four producers for 25 or 30 years - or even 40 years as I heard of today - but the clock has gone back to zero after each production. The workers involved in the case I mentioned went to sign up for the next production but because they were insisting on recognition of service, they were told to get away. There was no pension and no recognition of service. They were just gone.

The point is that, systemically and structurally, there is nothing to stop this happening. Of course the people currently doing well in the industry are saying this set-up is fine. This will be the case until it is not fine for them. A certain group of people have had the courage, and they have paid for it, to speak about this. I am not joking when I say I am inundated with calls from people who are still working in the film industry and are afraid. They tell me I am right but that if people put their heads above the parapet, they will be out of the film industry. This is what is happening in this industry. We must do something about this situation. We must establish if there is creative accounting.

Again, one of the points made by the representatives of Equity was that it is in the interests of the film producer companies never to make a profit. If they did, they would have to pay tax.

They would have to return the loans to Screen Ireland, which they also get. The Minister of State can check the figures on this, but I think that there were €22 million in loans from Screen Ireland last year. Does she know how much was paid back? It was €1 million. That is the same pattern every year. The Minister of State should not get me wrong: film is not like business. I am not saying it should always make money. In fact, part of the whole point of public funding of filming is that sometimes it will not, but this stuff needs to be really monitored and it is not being monitored.

One of the other features that even RTÉ has acknowledged about the current crisis relates to silos. One bit does not know what the other bit is doing. This is what is happening with the Government's own oversight of this situation. The Department of Finance is in charge of this bit. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is in charge of that bit. The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media is in charge of that bit. If you go to one bit, you are told: "No, that bit is their business". It is not integrated. This is why we need the forum, and we need a governance structure to get to the bottom of this because if you add up everything, this is about €150 million to €160 million a year, which is a lot of money.

We have these serious allegations about copyright directives. All of this could be invalidated if it is found that we are breaching the state aid rules. These are serious allegations. I appeal to the Government. It does not have to accept everything we are saying, or all the allegations, counterclaims and pros and cons, but could someone please look under the bonnet before we have an RTÉ-style situation exploding in our faces? Let us get to the bottom of it in a fair, honest, independent and objective way that cuts across the silos, and make sure it is not the case - sadly I think it is - that there is a small group at the top doing very well out of this. There are also a few people who are in with those people and it is fair enough if it is good for them, but then there is a load of other people who are terrified to say anything because they will not work again if they do. That is not a good basis on which to develop the Irish film industry, given what it could be and the huge potential that exists for the Irish film industry.

The very last thing I want to say is about owning stuff. We do not own anything. We own nothing. We used to own Ardmore Studios but we do not even own that any more. Most of the film companies do not own anything either, even though we have given them a lot of money to buy equipment. Where does the equipment go?

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