Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-24 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West There is a bit of detail in the proposed amendments. I acknowledge Paul Noonan in the Gallery. It is probably of no consolation whatsoever to him but "Alphabet Soup" by Bell X1 got me through my college days. They are an incredibly talented band. Senator Black is absolutely right that we are so rich with the number of talented artists we have in this country. Unfortunately, I cannot accept any of these amendments. I will speak to amendments Nos. 2 to 5, inclusive, together. While I appreciate their intention, I cannot accept them. I will try to explain in as much detail as possible, amendment by amendment and subsection by subsection, why we cannot do so. In amendment No. 2 to section 208(1), the Senators have proposed working that includes "justifiable and documented" collecting costs rather than "reasonable" collecting costs, as stated in the Bill. Detailed provisions on the deductible administrative costs apply to collective management organisations through the collective rights management regulations, which transpose the collective rights management directive. These regulations provide that any deductions made by collective management organisations must be justified and documented. The wording is already contained within those regulations. These deductions are subject to further scrutiny by the competent authority, the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland. The wording of the Bill was carefully considered. The word "reasonable" was chosen as it requires consideration of the question of fairness. Justification is already required and this forms part of the consideration as to what is reasonable. On that basis, the wording as proposed in the Bill is preferred, and the Government believes it provides the intended level of protection for performers. In section 208(2), the term "collecting society" is substituted for "collective management organisation". The term "collecting society" was chosen to ensure consistency with other part of the Copyright and Related Rights Act. Not all collective management organisations are collecting societies. Regarding the proposed wording in subsections (4), (5) and (8), the Minister, Deputy Burke, set out last week the rationale for the proposed new three steps, which are the following. First, a default 50:50 split applies in the first instance. Second, parties may negotiate a different agreement. Third, if either party is not happy with the 50:50 split, they may make an application to the Circuit Court for adjudication. The proposed amendment to subsection (8) proposes to allow the controller to make a person or organisation party to such proceedings. However, this is not necessary. Subsection (3B) of the Bill states that the sharing of equitable remuneration can be agreed by or on behalf of the performer and the owner who is a producer. It is already the case that a performer or producer may be represented by their representative body or a collective management organisation for the purpose of reaching an agreement. This is provided for in section 208(2), which states that the right to equitable remuneration can be assigned by a performer to a collecting society to exercise that right on his or her behalf. The Senators propose to retain the function of the controller as final arbitrary of disputes as to the sharing of equitable remuneration, which the Government does not accept. The Bill removes this function from the controller. This is necessary in the view of the Government. This point has been discussed both in Dáil Éireann and on last week's Second Stage debate in this Chamber. The reassignment of functions from the Comptroller of Intellectual Property to the courts constituted an appropriate and necessary course of action. Adjudication of a dispute by the controller under section 208 of the Act extends beyond the scope of intellectual property law and requires the application of equitable principles. For this reason, the Bill proposes to set out clearly a 50:50 sharing, which we expect will apply in the vast majority of cases. For exceptional cases where this 50:50 split is not deemed acceptable, the courts possess the requisite authority to adjudicate on matters of equity, drawing on case law and long-standing tradition of applying equitable remedies. The controller has statutory functions under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, which are mainly concerned with the registration of copyright licensing bodies, references and applications relating to licensing schemes operated by those bodies. For this particular type of dispute, which is complex and also very rare, the courts are best placed to adjudicate on such matters. Furthermore, a judgment of the court is enforceable, which is not the case for determinations made by the controller. In amendment No. 4, the Senators wish to delete the provision regarding limiting appeal from the Circuit Court to the High Court and from the High Court to the Court of Appeal to a point of law. The Government objects to this, which is a common provision in legislation. I thank Senator Black for proposing amendment No. 5 but I am unable to accept it. As discussed in response to amendment No. 1, this amendment extends beyond the scope of the Bill. It must be remembered that under Irish law the producer and performer may be represented by a collective management organisation of their choice, or none at all. In Ireland, this matter was the subject of a court case that concluded in 2021. This is a separate case to the one that was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. There is no question that Irish law is defective in this regard. The Government does not intend to legislate on this point. In addition, subsection (3B) of the Bill states that the sharing of equitable remuneration can be agreed by or on behalf of the performer and the owner who is the producer. On the proposed amendment regarding the calculation of equitable remuneration, the Bill sets out a new process to decide how equitable remuneration is shared if this cannot be agreed by those involved, as is required by the EU rental and lending directive. First, there is a 50:50 split. This is a new inclusion. Second, there is a possibility for the parties to negotiate a different split. This is contained in the current copyright Act. Third, there is a possibility for either party, if they cannot reach an agreement, to refer the matter to the Circuit Court to make a determination on that matter. The relevant directive and the international conventions require that member states lay down the conditions as to the sharing of the remuneration between them in the absence of an agreement between them. As part of the court case, it emerged that 18 member states provide in their copyright laws that in the absence of agreement between the parties, the single equitable remuneration following deduction of management costs is shared equally between producers and performers. The new provision will act as an incentive to the parties to reach an agreement along those lines. However, we do not wish to remove the right from producers and performers to reach an agreement between themselves as to sharing the remuneration that may differ from an equal share. Mandating equal sharing in all cases would remove this freedom to negotiate. It would also negate the need to have an arbitration process that is subject of section 3 of the Bill. Therefore, while I thank the Senators for their proposed amendments I cannot accept any of them. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-24