Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 December 2020

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

Impact of Covid-19 on the Film and Television Industry: Discussion

Ms Aoife O'Sullivan:

On the insurance question, we were fortunate with the TV drama that I mentioned that we had been insured before the outbreak hit and we were covered for Covid-19 both in terms of insurance and the bond. Bonding is just as important as insurance when it comes to the bigger budget projects because they are tasked to deliver the project no matter what happens. The bond company is paid a fee and it delivers the project. If anything happens where the production company cannot deliver the project, the bond company have to pay for that. Now both bond the companies and insurance companies are excluding Covid-19 and it is very challenging. I had another project that was supposed to shoot this year that has been pushed to next year because it cannot be bonded or insured for Covid-19. As Ms McGrane said, this is a very significant factor for the industry. We still do not know and we have a claim in on the current production. We have no idea the extent to which the insurance company will honour that claim and I obviously cannot talk about specifics. Most producers in the industry who have claims with the insurance companies are in the same boat. We just do not know to what extent we will be covered and will probably find ourselves short at the end of the day, which is a bit of a worry.

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