Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
============================================================

Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for his amendments - amendments Nos. 3 and 7 to which I will speak, as well as to the Government amendments Nos. 4 and 5 . I also thank Deputy Gogarty for his contribution. Amendments Nos. 3 and 7 were discussed at length during Committee Stage. I do not support them.
The Bill sets out a new process to decide how equitable remuneration is shared if this cannot be agreed between those involved, as is required by the EU rental and lending directive. The Bill therefore introduces a backstop, namely, a default 50:50 split between performers and producers. We expect this will mean that it is extremely unlikely that questions on what is equitable remuneration will be referred to court.
As discussed during Committee Stage, an individual may take a case, or a licensing body or collective management organisation, CMO, may take a case on behalf of their named member or members.
We discussed in great detail the role of the controller as compared to the court as final arbiter of such disputes and the rationale for this change. The Bill removes this function from the controller, 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 and producers in Ireland. To date, there were no referrals to the controller, until a dispute arose between two CMOs, which remains ongoing before the courts.
With this Bill, there is a clear process. Agreement should be reached through negotiation between producers and performers, and a default 50:50 split applies. Circumstances where there is a deviation from this default split would be extremely unusual.
I will now turn to the two Government amendments, Nos. 4 and 5, which I flagged during Committee Stage. These ensure that the amended Copyright and Related Rights Act will provide the same right of appeal as before. This will mean that if an adjudication is made by the Circuit Court, and the circumstances change, there is the possibility for either party to return to the court for another hearing once a year has passed since the original ruling.

---

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/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21