Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Creative Europe Programme 2021-2027: Discussion

Ms Teresa McGrane:

I might take some of those questions, the first of which was on video games. The video game sector presents an exciting opportunity for new audiovisual work to come out of Ireland. We have quite a healthy and young video games industry. Interestingly, much of it is located in the west of Ireland. From Screen Ireland's point of view, the other witnesses will be aware that the Government has approved a new tax incentive for video games, similar to the film production tax incentive. That is going through EU approval for the cultural test and hopefully that will be rolled out towards the end of the year. We are positive about what the impacts of the tax incentive will be. As the Deputy points to sustainable job creation, the video game sector is one that can do that. In the last 18 months, Screen Ireland has rolled out a number of hubs. One is in Galway and it is a film and TV talent hub and another is the animation hub for the animation sector. Because the industry has been growing so much, we have rolled out three crew hubs in Limerick, Wicklow and Galway. It is our intention to roll out a video games hub, the location of which is the subject of discussion. This will act as a hub to train up the next generation of video gamers. Many great things are happening in the video games world.

I might hand over to my colleagues to talk about sustainable tourism, although I could take about film tourism. Perhaps that is not the same thing.

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