Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04
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Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank Senator Black for her amendments. I know this is heartfelt and, of course, she is speaking from experience, which many people cannot do when speaking to amendments like this. I want to put on record that I come from an arts background in the creative industry, so I have an empathy for this.
When we were on Committee Stage, I encouraged RAAP to, and I think it had the opportunity to, engage with officials from the Department. I am sorry it did not get a meeting with the Minister, Deputy Burke. I am happy to meet RAAP in the future to talk further about a review.
For the moment, I thank the Senator for the amendments that she tabled on Committee Stage, and also thank Senators McDowell and Conway and other Senators for their engagement on the Bill. However, I am unable to accept the amendments, which propose to delete sections 3C, 3D and 3E of the Bill and restore the existing subsections (4) to (10), inclusive, of section 208 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act. We have extensively debated the role of the controller as compared with the court as the final arbiter of such disputes, and the rationale for this change, throughout the legislative process.
The Bill brings this function from the Controller of the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland in favour of the Circuit Court. The adjudication of such matters extends into a judicial remit and, therefore, the courts are best placed to decide on these matters. I do not accept that this will negatively impact on performers or producers in Ireland.
The inclusion of the 50:50 split is designed to clarify the meaning of sharing the "single equitable remuneration", thus creating legal certainty. In any case, it is noteworthy that since the Copyright and Related Rights Act was enacted in 2000, there had been no referrals to the controller until a dispute arose between two collective management organisations, CMOs, which remains ongoing before the courts and was referred to the controller during this process but was not heard. No disputes have arisen since then. This Bill seeks to reduce the likelihood of any dispute even further. It expressly provides in the proposed subsection (3A) that equitable remuneration less reasonable collecting costs shall be shared equally between the performer and the producer. Circumstances where there is a deviation from this default 50:50 split would be extremely unusual. Further, the parties may negotiate and agree to share the equitable remuneration in a different way, as provided for in the proposed subsection (3B) of this Bill. In the unlikely event of a dispute, the proposed subsection (3C) provides for the possibility of either party to make an application to the Circuit Court for a determination.
As has been discussed on previous Stages, the Government does not accept that the collective management organisations are excluded from the disputes process. An individual may take a case or a licensing body or collective management organisation may take a case on behalf of its named member or members.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04