Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to respond on behalf of my colleagues. We would be delighted to have a further meeting because the earlier meetings we had were very constructive. We are seeking to be constructive as the Minister of State knows. We seek to improve the legislation and the scheme therein. We are agreed that we will withdraw the amendments at this point and reserve the right to reintroduce them on Report Stage.

The Minister of State has indicated that he is not accepting the amendments on principle and we can certainly look at issues concerning blank tapes and so on. However, I expect that would not change on Report Stage. The Minister of State also said that the Department engaged in extensive consultation with stakeholders but that a scheme for fair dealing exceptions and fair compensation that we are proposing was not a priority for them. Our point is that the stakeholders to whom we are referring are not those who are collectively organised or from whom one would expect to get submissions, that is, the broad spectrum of members of the public, consumers, those who are using, copying, backing up and format-shifting all of the time. That is who we are trying to represent here. We are not talking about stakeholders who might be expected to engage in a collective way with the Department and that is the difficulty. We are not hearing from the people who will be the most affected, ultimately. That is what we are trying to address with our amendments.