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

I also repeat the issue about the film workers. Over the new year the WRC issued an absolutely damning ruling on the treatment of 38 members of the Irish Film Workers’ Association and established they had been blacklisted by Metropolitan Films International, which is probably the biggest recipient of section 481, and that their rights under the fixed-term workers legislation had been abused. The point is the Irish Film Workers’ Association and some of us in this House have been saying what was done in this case is endemic across the industry. It needs to be addressed because the condition of the €100 million given in section 481 to these film production companies is that they comply with the law by treating workers properly and giving them quality employment and training. It is similar with the actors, performers and writers who are being forced by film producers to sign buyout contracts where they are forced, essentially, to hand over their rights to future royalties and residuals from their performances, which is in breach of the copyright directive. These issues must now be addressed. We need to look at the constitution of the stakeholders' forum, which we asked for in the budget scrutiny committee and there should be cross-party representation from the committee at that forum.

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