Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 November 2020

Joint Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht

Future of Public Service Broadcasting and Impact of Covid-19 on the Media Sector: Discussion

Mr. Adrian Lynch:

I will start with that one. The Deputy has made a very good point. It comes back to funding, to an extent. In Element Pictures we got an international, independent production company which is working at the highest level. Much of drama is co-produced so a number of parties put money into it. They developed that particular project with BBC and, again, it is because our finances have been so suppressed in the past five to six years that the level of drama we have been doing has been way off what we want to be doing. We are changing that now but it means leveraging every euro we have from a licence fee point of view and putting that together with a partner abroad to tell an Irish story. There is the funding mechanics part, and the Deputy will find that most drama is co-produced. There are a number of parties involved including distributors, co-producers and other broadcasters. The most important part is that we are in a situation financially where we can nurture talent in Ireland and then bring that story to the world. As the public service broadcaster, we should be at the engine of that. There is a price on that because it needs to be funded but the reward is significant for all the reasons the Deputy outlined. We all want to have pride in our own culture. It is a very small country but if we look at the diversity of cultural output it is so strong so there is a massive opportunity for us as a country.

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