Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

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

Future of the Media Sector: Discussion

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

That is something that needs to be rectified because, while I am sorry for being parochial, the opportunities for production in west Cork are fantastic. Ms Finnegan mentioned "Holding" but "The Sparrow" and many other fantastic productions were also made down there. I have a follow-up question on that note. It is something I have raised with Screen Ireland before. Screen Ireland funds individual productions, which is fantastic. I have seen the credit list of productions it has funded over its time and what it has been involved in is unbelievably impressive. There is something I would like to see and I wonder if it could be explored. I refer to investment in and funding for smaller studios. I use the example of West Cork Film Studios. It has just received planning permission to convert a big furniture unit into a film studio. The studio is actively bidding on productions and for bigger companies to come and film there. It has the locations from Kinsale in the east all the way across to the Beara Peninsula. There are incredible locations. We have seen that in various productions. It also has the talent by the way. It has the set designers, the make-up artists and the location managers. They are all based down there in west Cork because it is obviously such a wonderful place to live. The company now has the studio but it needs to get up and running and off the ground. It does not want to go down the road of private investment. It would like to keep it almost as a community-led and community-driven film and television studio. Is that something that Screen Ireland could look at again? Could it look at financial support not just for individual productions but for smaller-scale film and television studios?

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