Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Finance

Finance Bill 2015: Committee Stage

4:00 pm

Photo of Michael NoonanMichael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is coming from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and from the Irish film industry. In Ireland, the structure is that there are people here who act as co-producers or agents for production companies abroad, and some of it was coming from at least one of those. I have had no communication that I can recall from a foreign-based production company. It was domestically-generated. I presume they were making their request knowing what the international industry were looking for.

As I say, it is hard to judge. When one allows for the fact that people normally look for more than they expect to get, it is hard to judge where the cap should be. I stated in the budget speech we or whoever is in the Department of Finance can review it again in two years. The commitment is there.

I will give the committee an idea of what is happening. In 2014, 72 applications were received by Revenue under the old scheme. Of these, 66 projects went ahead with an estimated cost to the Exchequer of €93,711,923 based upon relief being claimed at the higher rate of 41% that applied in 2014. The final tax cost will depend on claims made. The current figure in relation to this relief for 2014 is €72.6 million.

To date in 2015, 66 applications for the corporation tax credit were received with an estimated cost to the Exchequer of €48,219,224. Credits have been authorised to 35 projects at a cost to the Exchequer of €14,635,470. No one project has approached the current cap to date this year. However, one project under the old scheme made a subsequent application for additional episodes under the new scheme. This application, if made in entirety under the new scheme, would have breached the current cap.

Sometimes it is movies one is talking about. Seemingly, that is what the industry here would like to attract. It involves big employers, big budgets, etc. However, a lot of the activity here is television based. It would be something like "Game of Thrones", which, I suppose, is one of the more popular episodic series on television at present. It builds up, depending on how many episodes they shoot here and if they come back to do another series.

As I say, I am a bit tentative in my answers because I am not absolutely certain of where it will head, but I am convinced that it is worth doing. We will see by experience how much it will cost and what the cost-benefit analysis at that point will be.

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