Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Business of Joint Committee
The Creative Economy: Discussion (Resumed)

1:30 pm

Mr. Cathal Gaffney:

I am not entirely sure. I can speak from my experience of recruitment and from anecdotal evidence from colleagues in visual effects and other animation studios.

I presume when the students finish they want to do various things, including travel or work in other jurisdictions. I do not know what percentage of graduates want jobs in Ireland. Many skills are needed for animation such as computer animation, hand-drawn animation, technical skills, lighting and production experience. A wide variety of jobs need to be filled in any production. It is very hard to nail it down and say we need more animators because we outsource quite a bit of animation to Asia as it is. It is not a simple question to answer.