Strengthening Whistleblower Protections, Enforcement and Accountability in Public Administration: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-26
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

Lastly, on foot of comments from Deputy O'Reilly about workers, it is connected to protected disclosures but it is more generally about workers facing problems in particular industries and the punishments they suffer. I have raised again and again the fact that film workers working in the film industry in this country have been blacklisted out of the industry - people who have worked for 20, 30 and 40 years are gone from the industry and left with nothing - because they raised questions about the failure to implement things like the fixed-term workers' legislation.
I know for a fact, because I have met some of them, that the line producers who employ the people have said they will never employ them again based on their view of it. They are the people who have the power. The problem is that there is no independent adjudication of these things and I have raised again and again that the workers have no defence against blacklisting in the film industry, even though the Irish State funds the film industry. What does the Department of arts do when you say this to it? It goes to the people against whom the allegations are made to ask whether the allegations are true. The people who get the money from the Department say of course they are not true and they are totally innocent. What else would they say? This has to stop.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:22+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-26