Mr. Gareth Lee:

On the skills side, I would like to reference the work of Screen Skills Ireland and to commend the team on their work this year. In March, Covid-19 hit us but, historically, we would have delivered all of our course provision face-to-face in physical environments. We had to move to the delivery of online provision, which we did very quickly. By the end of March we were up and running with online courses and were able to offer more than 80 different continuous professional development courses online to the industry throughout the pandemic. That has been a great support to the sector in keeping people upskilled but it also provided an opportunity for people to meet and to bring a sense of community to the sector during a difficult time.

There are challenges, which is what the committee is focused on, and many of us wish to talk about and address these as we go forward, not least of which is Covid-19. There are also, however, some very positive developments within the sector. From a section 481 skills side, we have introduced a new system for tracking and engaging on the skills side requirements of that section. That is leading to very positive skills development opportunities on productions and to us getting very close and detailed data on where the skills needs are in the industry, both current and future ones that are coming down the track.

Another positive point worth referring to is the development of the guilds and how important the work that they do is becoming. We have linked quite closely with the guilds in recent times on the development of a new competency framework for the sector, which will help in future planning around skills as well as the section 481 skills development process and will also lead to opportunities for curriculum development and all so on at third level, which will be important.

There are two other points that they may not have been discussed earlier but they are significant. The first is the Government’s announcement of a potential games tax credit down the line. That is an interesting development. There are many crossovers in skill sets across games, animation and visual effects. That could help grow the sector and bring a lot of cross-pollination of skills. Second, is where Ms O’Sullivan referred to the extension of the regional uplift of the 5% into next year, which is very welcome, given the difficult year that was 2020. From my point of view that is about growing a regional skills base and that takes time. The longer that the regional uplift can be extended to build a crew base, the better. It will mean greater links between producers, companies and studios to local third level and further education providers, which will bring real strength and sustainability to growing the sector in a regional way.