Ms Teresa McGrane:

I shall pick up on two points mentioned by Ms Flanagan of which insurance is one. Insurance is so important for the production sector in 2021. We have a strong pipeline of projects coming here for 2021 but what has become clear is the extent of the unforeseen additional costs generated by the protocols in order to keep the industry working. For some projects, it has cost a staggering amount to test the cast and crew every week. People also need to work within pods so if there is a Covid outbreak then the affected pod can be removed thus avoiding transmission to the remaining cast and crew. There is also the cost of quarantine. I take my hat off to the industry that includes the producers, casts and crews who really wanted to work. The circumstances in which they have had to work have not been easy but they are getting better and people have grown more used to them.

The insurance issues have been very difficult. In February it hit us that the full suite of insurances were not available to production, which put it at huge risk in terms of any form of a Covid outbreak. The Department put in place a production continuation fund but we still require that all productions are insured to the hilt as far as possible. There had been a suite of insurances available to insure the cast, which was one of the big risks. Unfortunately, that has fallen away because there have been calls on the fund in Europe. We hope that the funding will come back to us in 2021. The production continuation fund has been an enormous confidence boost to encourage productions to get back up and running. It is our wish that the Government continues the scheme in 2021. We would like to expand it because it was limited in nature as we were never sure that we could continue shooting productions in level 5. We have continued, which frees up the funding a little. We would like the scheme to be expanded and for opportunities to be explored.