Ms Mary Nash:

First, the tax reliefs for all productions are the same. An incoming production must partner with an Irish production company or it cannot get tax relief. In other words, a company from America, Britain or France cannot get tax relief unless it partners with an Irish company. It is the Irish company that makes the application for the tax relief. The way we look at it in the Department is that the incoming and indigenous productions have a symbiotic relationship and people move between the two fairly seamlessly, both the shooting and construction crew - I am talking about live action here - and the talent, as they are called, that is, the actors and so on. The incoming productions are the ones where the kind of high-level training occurs for the indigenous crew.