Actors in Ireland should receive similar terms to those in Britain, union says

Actors in Ireland should receive similar terms to those in place in Britain, delegates to the Siptu biennial conference in Sligo have agreed.

The Irish actors’ union Equity, which is affiliated with Siptu, is involved in ongoing talks with film industry body Screen Producers Ireland on a new deal for actors working in what has been a thriving sector in recent years. Irish Equity wants to replicate the terms of the equivalent British industry deal which, it says, often already applies on Irish productions to actors coming from overseas to Ireland to work.

Such a deal would offer a number of benefits to Irish actors, the president of Irish Equity, Gerry O’Brien, told delegates at the conference on Tuesday, with improved residuals – payments linked to the financial success of a film or television project – among the key targets of the union in the negotiations.

Irish Equity is affiliated to Siptu and Mr O’Brien told delegates that the industry had an obligation to improve its treatment of actors and other workers involved in film making given the scale of the section 481 tax breaks available to productions here.

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He said the Sag-Aftra deal under which American actors work and the UK’s Pact one were far superior to the one under which Irish actors work but that both of those can be used here and commonly are when overseas actors come to Ireland to work.

He has previously complained that Irish actors can often find themselves working on inferior terms to overseas actors working on the same production here. Recent attempts by Equity to have improvements made by the Government in the budget to section 481 linked to the pay and conditions of those working on the productions which the measure helps to finance have so far failed.

“I’m sure you guys would like to see the actors who live and work in this country being treated equally, and that some of your tax money is coming back into our pockets,” Mr O’Brien told the delegates.

The motion he was proposing called for “a comprehensive audiovisual agreement for the island of Ireland that ensures terms and conditions of engagement and the assignment of intellectual property rights of our members are valued equally across the 32 counties”.

Supporting the motion, David Agnew of the Musicians Union of Ireland told the conference that even in a society celebrated for being “culturally rich and vibrant” it was becoming “almost impossible for many to actually make any kind of a living”.

The situation, Mr O’Brien suggested, had been contributed to by a particular reluctance of streaming companies like Netflix to pay significant residuals, something that was a key issue in the recent strike by members of the American actors union Sag-Aftra and on which that organisation said it had secured large concessions.

Asked on RTÉ Radio last week whether the deal in the US would affect actors working on projects in Ireland funded by the big American streaming companies, Ed Guiney of Element Pictures said the deal “shines a light on how the world has changed and how streamers properly compensate actors, workers, crew, film makers, producers… everyone”.