Mr. Niall Gibbons:

This is at the centre of what we do. The three points people always make in research abroad on what are what it is about Ireland are the friendliness and warmth of the people, Irish culture and our landscape. The Senator mentioned “The Banshees of Inisherin” as just one example. The screen tourism area has very much exploded in the past ten years. We have a dedicated resource in-house for dealing with that and we are working very closely with Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen. We saw the success of the series “Game of Thrones” and what that did for Northern Ireland. We had the success of “Star Wars”, “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “An Cailín Ciúin” and there is a pipeline of other projects coming down the track, for example, “Vikings: Valhalla". What that series has done has been very strong. Searchlight Pictures has made a two-minute short movie for us which has been viewed 20 million times. We did a great deal of promotion around the Oscars. Whether a film wins an Oscar or not does not matter; it is about being there and having a presence in the marketplace.

To give a few other cultural examples, we now have partnership agreements in place with the Irish Arts Center in New York, Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and the London Irish Centre. This is bringing the diaspora, the cultural bit, and trying to redefine the stereotype of the Irish abroad. There is a great exhibition on in New York at the moment called "Paddy Irishman" by Ross O’Callaghan. Part of the response to that is the breaking down of the stereotypes that people often have when they think about the Irish abroad.