Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I welcome the Minister's move. I strongly supported the idea of having a certain amount of advertising to provide the film channel with some resources. We must be careful about seeing this in commercial terms and I do not necessarily agree with Deputy Coveney. Perhaps the Minister could elaborate on his original thinking. I do not think he saw this as a movie channel. I understand it is to provide a showcase for Irish film and I presume Irish film encompasses Irish documentary film making and short films. I ask the Minister to confirm this.

Issues are raised not so much about the balance between non-Irish and Irish film, because the Irish Film Board would have a fairly good handle on this, but in terms of copyright. It is an issue for independent producers and much frustration is experienced where something is made for a television station such as RTE or TV3 and the independent film producer feels that it could be exploited further but the television station holds copyright. How will this be dealt with?

Having a film channel is a very enlightened idea and I am not afraid of it being a niche arty channel because those who would watch it are people too. I imagine it will be broader than that. However, I have concerns that sourcing material will be a real difficulty. We are a small country and film is not mass produced. It is quite limited. However, it will be extremely limited if the copyrights issues relating to independent producers gets in the way of a documentary or a short film being shown on a film channel the purpose of which is to encourage the numbers involved in this niche to grow.

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