Ms Sarah Glennane:

Creators are key investors in our creative economy. "An Cailín Ciúin", which we are delighted is going to the Oscars, was made on a shoestring budget, as is often the case with Irish-language productions. It has gone on to do much better than anyone expected. Creators are able to do that when they can access work in other areas and it is all an ecosystem. We are calling for funding to be channelled into the ecosystem, which will allow all of these things to happen. When service productions are coming in and the costs of those are increasingly higher, we must rely on funding from external sources. They then have a greater say in who the creators are. The composer may be based in a partner territory. They may also take the rights out of the country, which means there is no economic return and it does not feed the ecosystem in the same way. Our approach has been invaluable in feeding the ecosystem, keeping studios going and having many people in employment, as the Screen Ireland report on the cultural dividends of section 481 would conclude. We would argue that we need extra funding to support indigenous Irish production to go hand in hand with that, and to bring more Irish films to the Oscars.