Dr. Annie Doona:

I will try to remember the various questions. Section 481 has been very important for the Irish film industry and we welcomed its roll-out and expansion. It helps us to compete internationally and helps us with inward investment and in developing the film industry that we want to see.

I think Senator Warfield asked me what will help create a good Irish film industry. There are a number of factors to that. One is education and training and the Senator mentioned the educational institutions in Galway. My national film school is IADT. There is a real need to grow and develop the next generation of indigenous film-makers, editors and producers. That will really help us. The issue of studio space, which is partly being addressed now, is very important. We have seen some productions go elsewhere because, we are delighted to say, the studios here are very busy. However, if we could expand that studio space and what is available for people to allow them to come here and bring that inward investment, as well as develop the industry, that would really help us.

We do a lot of work with Northern Ireland Screen. We co-fund projects with it, including "The Truth Commissioner". Northern Ireland Screen also provides funding to inward productions in Northern Ireland and promotes Irish film, so we have a very good relationship with Northern Ireland Screen and we want to continue that cross-Border working and development.

Funding is a big issue for us. Our funding was €20 million back in 2008 but now it is around €12 million. We got an additional €500,000 from the Minister last year, for which we were very grateful, but as I said earlier, film investment occurs over a long number of years, in individuals, in projects and in companies, so we could do so much more. We did a huge amount and got huge international acclaim with a small amount of money but we turned down projects. I will give the committee a concrete example of this. We have already had to halt the amount of money for animation film production this year because it has almost doubled from what we funded last year. The applications for animation feature films, on the back of the success of films like "Song of the Sea" is great but we do not have the money at the moment to fund those and we do not have the staff to do that work with the animation sector. We are doing as much as we can with a small budget. We genuinely believe that with a return to that €20 million funding, we would see much more film production, much more inward investment, more co-production and an even better, even stronger and more economically productive film industry.