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

With the money we are investing, is it not worrying that, at the end of it, we have nothing? It is not just section 481. There was a slight batting off of the thing and saying this is section 481, and I understand this is the film board, although the idea that these two things are completely separate is a bit ridiculous. They both go to the same film producer companies. Every single film produced here gets money off the film board and gets money off section 481. The combination of State moneys is a significant fact. The films would not happen without that money. It comes from two arms of the State, but it is said this bit is not our responsibility and workers' rights are the responsibility of Department of trade and enterprise, apparently, so there are three Ministries and everybody is batting it off to everybody else.

I would like a response to the following at some point, if the Minister cannot give it now. Am I not right in saying that EU directives on state aid to the audiovisual industry, which includes money from the film board, say it is conditional on meeting industry tests? Those tests require the building up of permanent pools of skills and companies of scale. Where are the companies of scale? They cannot be companies of scale if they say they have no employees. The biggest companies in this country have tiny numbers of admin people. One, which has been in receipt of large amounts of money, recently sold a majority share off to another big international company, Element. After all that money we have poured in to create a company that still does not really have any scale but is one of the biggest we have, it has now sold, and I presume and am guessing pretty pennies were made there, although I do not know the exact figures on it. Specifically for the film board, does the Minister know what the recoupment rate is on that money? The aggregate, loans and grants over that period are just under €500 million, mostly in loans.

Does the Minister know how much we got back? Over time, the amount will go up to €800 million. Most of the arrangements are categorised as loans and the main recipients are the film producer companies I mentioned. There are about four that get most of the money. I understand that not every film will make money. In fact, in many cases we want to give money for productions that will not make money. I back that but the biggest recipients make money. We hear on the news all the time that they have got this or that award, so they must be making money. However, we do not get any of it back, even though we have given the recipients loans. Do we know what the recoupment rate is?

One of the film workers' representative groups, most of which have been blacklisted out of the industry and are fighting cases in the Labour Court and so on, produced a report a few years ago showing that, at that stage, loans totalling €176 million had been given and that the recoupment rate was €12 million, or less than 10%. The aggregate figure is now up to just under €500 million. If the recoupment rate is roughly the same as I have suggested, it is very low. I am not suggesting that every film has to make a profit. An Irish Equity representative said the most creative thing in the Irish film industry is the accountancy. It is a good line, is it not? The point he was making, which needs to be considered, is that the way we have managed to structure the industry is such that films are set up so that on paper they never make a profit. If they made a profit, they could have to pay somebody back or pay some tax, so they are set up in such a way that they never make a profit. I sharply distinguish between these and the small, genuine filmmakers who are inevitably not going to make money and struggle to get film productions off the ground. I am not talking about them. They need every bit of support they can get. I am referring to the big guys, who are clearly successful, and to where there are royalties that could be given to the actors. We do not know where the royalties go because actors are forced to sign buy-out contracts. These things need to be looked into.

I hope we and the Minister present will work in a joined-up way with the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to stop the game of saying various things are the responsibility of various others. I honestly believe that under the EU directive, we are required to ensure the net result is a serious industry in which people have some security of employment and in which actors, writers and performers get proper remuneration, which they are not getting currently. I will leave it at that as I know we are running out of time, but I hope the Minister will seriously take the response on board.

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