Dr. Annie Doona:

I am quite happy to start. Waking the Feminists was a really important watershed moment for Irish society. I am a member of the International Women's Forum, the Women's Executive Network and Women in Film and Television Ireland and have a personal history of many years of campaigning on gender equality, diversity and access to education. It is something I am very passionate about. Around the time that the Abbey Theatre was dealing with the Waking the Feminists movement and Lian Bell and others were working in that area, the new Irish Film Board, under my chairmanship, was also discussing gender diversity. What we realised was that we had something to say about that too. Last year we produced a six-point plan around gender diversity, which we published on our website. That plan looks at gender diversity but obviously in our strategy, we are looking at diversity in general. The six-point plan deals with education, training, awareness and with the unconscious bias that exists in the film industry along with all other industries. We were out of the traps pretty quickly after Waking the Feminists in producing a plan. What we have been doing since then is qualitative work, including running seminars on diversity and inclusion in film. We have also been doing quantitative work, collecting statistics on the number of films we are funding that have women directors and cinematographers and the number that represent issues such as regionalism, diversity, the Irish language and so forth. We have become very aware and I would like to think that part of that is because of me, in my role as chair, saying this something about which I am passionate but I also had a board and executive in the Irish Film Board who were very keen to do this as well. If members look at the Irish Film Board website, they will see that, every quarter, we are making progress in terms of diversity.

In terms of diversity, we have focused on gender but we also have been looking at the regions. The Irish Film Board is based in Galway, with some staff based in Dublin. We have been looking not only at Cork and Galway but also at festivals deep in the regions and at the development of audiences. What are the stories that the regions need to hear? I mentioned "A Date for Mad Mary", which is set in Drogheda. It may only be up the road, but not many films have come out of Drogheda. Moreover, "The Young Offenders" is set in Cork, we have had the Dingle Film Festival as I mentioned earlier and we are working with the regions to develop film and film festivals. The regional, diversity and equality agendas are very important in terms of telling stories about the breadth of experience in Ireland. We are not Dublin-centric but are telling stories about people who have diverse lives and diverse experiences. Through our six-point plan around gender and our commitment to diversity in our strategy, we are really focusing on that. That is filtering out into the industry. People are realising that we do not want to tell one side of any story. We want to tell stories from across the diverse range of the population in Ireland.

In terms of the international scene, the Chairman's question is very interesting. We do a lot of co-production work with Canada, the UK and other countries. Successful films like "Room" and "Brooklyn" were co-productions. We are used to seeing what is good practice elsewhere and where we need to benchmark. We do a lot of benchmarking against countries like Sweden, for example, which has a very vibrant industry and is very strong on the issues of equality and diversity. We look at good practice in Canada, we attend the international film festivals, we are in constant dialogue with others and are part of European film projects through Eurimages and so forth. We are constantly examining good practice in the industry and finding ways to work with and learn from others. The committee can be confident that the board and I are doing that.