Mr. James Hickey:

If Screen Ireland was given additional funding on a regional basis, it would seriously consider ring-fencing it, particularly when bringing in projects into the regions. While we are mentioning competition, this island already has a strongly performing regional screen development agency, namely, Northern Ireland Screen. Northern Ireland Screen is competing to try to bring projects into Northern Ireland. The only way it is able to compete is not by having an additional tax incentive uplift but instead by providing investment to large inward production projects that come to the studios in Belfast. In a sense, there is a regional funding agency that funds, on a discretionary basis, projects coming into the region. Obviously, Northern Ireland struggles to compete with the rest of the UK, which has a fabulous level of infrastructure, particularly around the London area. To get projects in the UK to go to Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Screen has provide significant levels of funding to projects that are brought into the studios in Belfast. It is worth looking at that model and saying how, for example, we could replicate that in the Republic. One way in which we could do that is through significant additional funding for Screen Ireland, which is dedicated to the ways in which Northern Ireland Screen funds its projects. That is one suggestion. Screen Ireland will say that an automatic incentive is always a better sales pitch and I am sure my colleagues would all agree with that. However, since we are struggling to come up with a version of that now, I would urge as an interim urgent measure that additional funding be given to Screen Ireland in order that it could do what Northern Ireland Screen does in the short term. If we could get that much in place for next year's budget, that would be extraordinarily helpful. The one thing to say about creating is that the industry will thrive and provide greater certainty if there are greater levels of production activity going on. While we are very successful in Dublin and Wicklow, there are still challenges in terms of competing with the rest of the world and Ms Geraghty has just outlined particular challenges that are coming from the UK now. The best way to achieve certainty in the industry in Ireland for both producers and all the cast and crew working in them is in making sure the incentives are competing successfully with what is available out there in the rest of the world.