I am assuming my amendment was ruled out of order on the basis it goes beyond the scope of the Bill or something to that effect. I understand why, technically, this might have been ruled out of order. To my mind, however, it very much is, or should be, part of the Act this Bill is amending to make the grants and loans the Irish Film Board gives out for film productions far more strictly conditional on the film production companies that receive those grants and loans providing quality employment and training. They are not legally required to under the film board Act but, in general, it is the position of the Government, more via section 481, that public funding to the film industry should be conditional on the provision of quality employment and training. In the case of section 481, public funding is legally conditional on the provision of quality employment and training. I know it is not the case with funding that is coming via the Irish Film Board. That is not written into law, as such, but I am saying it should be. Not only should it be written into law, but we need to make sure it happens. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many who work in the film industry, that industry test, as it is known, is not being met. I am speaking slightly off the top of my head, so the Minister can come back to me on this. My understanding is that the EU directives governing state aid to the audiovisual industry say that the state aid is conditional on the meeting of the industry test and the culture test. I am all for giving more aid and support to the arts, film and culture, but I am also very much for the conditions of quality employment and training, and the building up of a real industry. The Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I think the EU directive refers to the need to create companies of scale. What is meant by creating an industry is that we create companies of scale and, in other words, we build up a permanent pool of skills to actually make an industry. That industry would have real jobs and, therefore, the people who work in the industry would have some level of security about employment, so it is not just a fly-by-night industry where nobody has any rights or entitlements, or security or certainty about their ability to work in that industry or have an income over the long term. To my mind, the grants and loans are very significant. What this Bill is doing is raising the ceiling from €500 million, which we have nearly reached, to €800 million. That is a lot of money to be giving out. I think it is €490 million at present. If we add section 481, which is the other arm of the State giving money to the same film productions, probably over the same period, we are probably talking about €4 billion. It is big money, and there are some other streams of money as well. As I said, I am all for that money and even more going in. However, I do not believe we have the conditions of quality employment and training, particularly in relation to the fixed-term workers legislation, where people have been working on successive productions over the years. Film crew of all sorts will work on successive productions, but for each production, a DAC, or designated activity company, is set up. The people who set up that subsidiary, and who receive the money from the Government, are from the producer company, such as Metropolitan, Element or one of those. It is a standing company, but it sets up different DACs for each film production. When the people who work on those multiple productions go in and assert their employment rights, they will say that they worked on the last production, the one before that and the one before that, and, therefore, they are entitled to work on the next one. However, if, for some reason, the company decides that it does not want them back because maybe they have been asking for their rights, giving out about the fact they do not get holiday entitlements or are involved in trade union activity, or whatever, it can decide that it does not want to employ them on the next production. That has happened to many workers, who then take a case. They go to the WRC and say that the company, which gets money from the State, from the Irish Film Board and under section 481, had set up a DAC and employed them on multiple productions and, therefore, they are asserting their rights under law to, for example, a contract of indefinite duration. The company that gets the money from the Government for quality employment and training will say that they are not its employees, even though it knows them, and even though it set up all of the subsidiaries, which are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company that gets the money for quality employment and training. It hides behind that DAC and says they are not its employees, even though they may have worked for the company for ten, 12 or 15 years. The company goes in and signs sworn affidavits to that effect. At the WRC recently, a case was taken by stagehands, who won by establishing that the company cannot hide behind the DAC. The film producer company then went to the Labour Court to try to overturn that decision, and it succeeded. The stagehands then went to the High Court, which very recently made a ruling that said what the Labour Court had decided was ridiculous because it simply took the producer company’s word that these people were not its employees, and it never looked further into it, when, clearly, the producer company was the company that got the money from the State. Reference was made in the High Court ruling to the moneys received from the State as proof that the producer company that was denying the employment relationship is the recipient of an incentive from the State. The State is involved here. I do not understand why the State would not clarify this issue. This has been going on for years, and multiple cases have been taken. The State could just step in and say that this is what it means when it gives the money, and that it is going to clarify that, in law and in legislation, this is what it means by quality employment and training. It means that the company the State gives the money to cannot hide behind a pop-up shop that it sets up when it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the entity that the State gives the money to. That is what I am asking. While the amendment has been ruled out of order, I would still ask the Minister to seriously consider it, although not for this Bill, because that is not going to happen. By the same token, for the performers, writers, directors and others, their gripe also revolves around the DAC. If they want to work on a film and the producer has set up a DAC to do it, they are handed a contract to work on that film, and that contract states that they will sign away their right to future royalties to the DAC. In the past, actors, writers and performers would have received residuals - royalty payments - if the particular production turned out to be successful and did really well. However, the producer companies do not want to give the intellectual property rights to a share of future royalties. Instead, they want to say that they are giving the equitable remuneration that is required upfront. For the Minister to understand this, there is no way the producer company can say it is equitable remuneration upfront. How could it? It does not know how the film is going to do. It does not know if it is going to be played again and again or be a big success, and, therefore, be put out all over the world, on Netflix and the streamers, and be played in a lot of cinemas. How successful it is will determine how much money the film makes. However, if the actors are told they have to agree upfront to sign away their rights, and the company is going to pay them so much now, they lose out on all that downstream stuff. Again, and this is a technical point, the rights for that film are signed over to the DAC. Where do those rights go after the DAC is wound up? Who do they go to? As far as I know, nobody really knows. I bet the producer company the Government gives the money to knows, and its beneficiary.
Sentiment score: 0.15
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.
Sentiment score: 0.03
Thank you, Minister.
Sentiment score: 0.36
I do not know if the Minister has an answer to these matters and I would appreciate it if he would look at them. The aggregate is over a very long period but it is €20 million to €30 million a year and then another arm of the State gives about €100 million or more. It is a lot of money each year and it builds up. One point I will make, and the Minister really needs to consider it, is that for all that money added up over time, the State has nothing - zero. We have nothing. We do not own anything. That money has paid for one of the major film producer companies, which regularly goes across the table to tell its employees they are not its employees or makes people-----
Sentiment score: 0.06
We used to own one third part of Ardmore Studios. I would be in favour of that.
Sentiment score: 0.22
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.
Sentiment score: 0.10
In the minute that is left, I want to make it absolutely clear that nobody here is saying it is about quantifying arts in terms of pounds and pence, or whatever the expression is. A lot of art has to be subsidised because it gives a big cultural benefit, but it should not be the case that people who work in the industry and are increasingly getting degrees, qualifications and all sorts of things have absolutely no security about the possibility of working in film production. I know it cannot be the same as any other job. Nobody is suggesting it should be, but there could be a significantly greater level of security and there could be a situation where it is not wide open for people to be victimised. At the moment, there is literally no protection against what Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú said, which is just not getting the phone call. It is as simple as that. You get the phone call or you do not get the phone call. There is no protection against not getting a phone call. That should stop. Similarly, there is no protection against actors, writers and performers having a contract put in front of them and being told to sign that or see you later. That should not happen.
Sentiment score: 0.01