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

On Thursday the Dáil debated the report produced by the Committee on Budgetary Oversight on the section 481 film tax credit and issues in the film industry. This was the second committee in a number of years to recommend there would be a stakeholder forum to address very serious issues that echo in a very serious way the things that have happened recently in RTÉ. There are allegations of systematic blacklisting; that the law, in terms of the copyright directive on the remuneration of actors, performers and writers, is being systematically broken; that there is abuse of the rights of crew in terms of systematic law breaking in the fixed-term workers’ legislation; and there is an inside culture of a small number of producers getting all the money while other producers are effectively excluded. These are very serious allegations which are very similar to the closely related audio-visual sector. Indeed, RTÉ is involved in commissioning many of the television series.

There is claim and counter claim but given what we have seen in RTÉ, does the Government now not need to commit to getting to the truth and establish the stakeholder forum that will objectively investigate these very serious issues when there is a lot of public money at stake?

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