Ms Désirée Finnegan:

That is exactly what the priorities are. In terms of the inward production, studio space is growing in Ireland, as the Senator said. Before now, the infrastructure has been insufficient and that was outlined in 2017 in the Olsberg report. If all these studio spaces come online, it will open up an incredible possibility for a pipeline of big international productions to come to Ireland. We had a very successful trade mission to Los Angeles before the pandemic with the Tánaiste. We met with all the major studios and streamers and the feedback was really clear that Ireland is a very attractive place to film and that we have a very competitive tax incentive. There is always feedback on things we could streamline and we can look at some of our nearest competitors in terms of jurisdictions for things we could do. The biggest challenge for Screen Ireland is twofold. It is about maintaining the balance between international production and, as Ms Bergin said, the local productions generating creatively Irish-led stories, but also the depth of crews that will be required. Our skills team have been doing a huge amount of work. We recently launched two academies, a live-action academy and an animation one, to try to help build that depth of crew. In our strategy we will also be announcing some crew hubs that are being built, which will hopefully cover the whole country with a view to expanding the crew base for when these productions come in. On one production alone during the summer we had over 1,000 Irish crew. There are great opportunities there but alongside the studio expansion, we need to ensure we have the right crew levels in place as well.