Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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14. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if her attention has been drawn to the concerns recently raised by an organisation (details supplied) regarding the buy-out contracts and inadequate remuneration for actors and performers in relation to their intellectual property rights on publicly-funded film productions and the concerns raised by representatives of film crew about blacklisting and the lack of rights for workers on publicly-funded film productions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [56981/22]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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The buy-out of contracts relating to intellectual property rights as well as copyright issues in general, falls under the remit of my colleague the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

The EU (Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market) Regulations 2021 were signed into Irish law by the Tánaiste on 12 November 2021 and came into effect on the same date. These Regulations transposed the 2019 EU Copyright Directive into Irish law.

The new law strengthens the position of performers when making an agreement to transfer the rights of their work by requiring the following principles to be followed in making such an agreement:

- a right to appropriate and proportionate remuneration

- a 'transparency obligation' to help them access more information about how their work is being used;

- a 'contract adjustment mechanism' to enable them to obtain a fair share when the remuneration originally agreed becomes disproportionately low compared to the success of their work or performance;

- a 'right of revocation' allowing them to take back their rights when their works are not being used.

Concerns raised by the organisation referred to by the Deputy can be referred to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Under Section 481 procedures, applicants must provide details of any WRC decisions in relation to the qualifying company, the producer company or other companies in the film group, and where those decisions are a finding against such a company, confirmation that the finding has been followed or an explanation where the finding has not been followed must be provided.

A meeting with the organisation referred to will be attended by officials of my Department and Screen Ireland tomorrow to discuss copyright and the issue of protection of intellectual property within the film tax relief.

I would also call the Deputy’s attention to the Film Crew agreement between the ICTU film group of trade unions and Screen Producers Ireland, which has been operating successfully for two years.

Finally, under the Safe to Create Programme, a training programme has been developed on Dignity at Work issues, including tackling bullying and harassment, unconscious bias and bystander training. In the coming weeks, Screen Ireland funding will require a majority of persons working on productions to have completed these training courses.