Ms D?sir?e Finnegan:

On the Irish language, Screen Ireland has also been working for quite some time on a cultural dividend report. We went out to tender and commissioned a report by Olsberg, international entertainment industry consultants that work globally, to assess both the cultural dividend and the industry development value of section 481. It was a much more complicated undertaking than we had anticipated because cultural value manifests itself in a variety of ways, many of which can be quite hard to quantify. We hope to have that report imminently to share with the committee. One of the aspects I found very interesting in the report is a key finding around the Irish language. They applied a framework to assess cultural value across intrinsic, institutional and instrumental values. Within one of those instrumental values they talk about how it works to encourage, promote and preserve the Irish language. They surveyed a number of individuals across the Irish public. Respondents under the age of 35 were more likely to say that Irish screen content encouraged people to be proud of the Irish language and made them want to learn the Irish language or speak it more frequently. The report also went on to comment that projects made in the Irish language have an especially important cultural and educational role in helping to engage people of all ages and especially learners. We thought that was a very interesting takeaway from the report.