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

Exactly. The actors, writers and performers do not know where their rights have gone. These are their intellectual property rights. Equity has been campaigning on this and is asking for contracts similar to the PACT Equity in the UK, where there are superior contracts. Often, a guff answer is given back by the producers, that the PACT Equity contract is an English agreement and not suitable to Ireland. That is just nonsense. This is what the actors want here. The actors, writers and performers are getting inferior contracts to their counterparts in Britain. Give them the proper contracts and end the use of buy-out contracts. End the situation where the producers the Government is giving money to are essentially blackmailing writers, performers and actors into signing buy-out contracts, because if they do not sign them, they do not get work. The net result of all of this is, if you do not do what the producers tell you, you do not get on the film, whether you are a member of crew, a performer or whatever. You are just blacklisted out of the industry, branded a troublemaker and do not get back in. The "You're never going to work in this town" stuff has to end.

That happens, just so the Minister knows. I went to the Labour Court with these people and I just could not believe it. The film production company that was funded by the State had this phalanx of lawyers, legal advisers and so on. It had all of the lawyers. In the case I went to see, two stage hands were faced with all of those people. How are they supposed to deal with all of them? Where do the film production companies get the money to employ all of these lawyers? The companies have no employees, by the way. They just set up DACs. That is the ask.

I am sure my colleagues Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Ó Murchú want to speak. I ask the Government to seriously do something about this.

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