Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing the opening statements. I have read them. I was in the Dáil Chamber, so I was not able to hear them. I have enjoyed the conversation very much.

I want to go on to quite a broad question. I would like to hear a contribution from all of the witnesses in regard to potential economic benefits, given the Screen Producers Ireland opening statement refers to 11,960 jobs. I want to hear about the potential for growth. Let us say the content fund goes towards industry. Has any work been carried out or published showing the economic benefits in terms of direct employment and indirect employment? For example, to come back to the favourite example of the moment, we see what “Normal People” has done for the north west in terms of creating tourism. I am here in west Cork and, locally, I can think of “Star Wars”, which was shot here and which gave a huge tourism boost. I would like to hear about this aspect. If we want buy-in, not everybody is interested in the direct creative work that the Irish industry produces, although it is incredible, but some people will get behind this if they can see overall economic benefits.

I agree 100% with the contribution of Ms Callery in terms of our reputation for the quality of work we produce. We need only think of the writers, the screenwriters, the directors and even the composers we have, and some of our composers are internationally renowned for composing scores. Considering the size of the nation, we are batting way above the average and it is something we can all be very proud of. Some of the content put together by independent artists is mind-blowing in terms of the style, the imagery and the story art, so I fully agree with Ms Callery on that. It is something we need to convince everybody about, and it is easy enough to do that.

Overall, my question pertains to the direct and indirect economic benefits of this industry to Ireland. That should convince the rest of the nation we need to make sure the industry gets a fair share of that content fund.