Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There has been much discussion on section 481 both on Committee and now on Report Stage. We focused on those topics last night.

Specifically, we discussed the economic benefits of section 481 in terms of jobs, social impacts and so on, but I would like to hear more from the Minister about the rationale for the regional uplift measure that he has proposed. Do not get me wrong - we need to stimulate, promote and encourage film making in the regions and in areas beyond where it is currently taking place. As Deputy Michael McGrath's amendment implies, though, there may be a difficulty, in that the measure is encouraging film production and film investment to go to particular places, possibly at the expense of other places that would equally like to develop a film industry or where a film industry already exists.

Could this underpin the decline and demise of Ardmore Studios in Bray? The Government made a terrible decision in selling its share to the people who own Troy Studios and who now have a serious conflict of interest between their ambitions for Troy Studios and the fact that they also have Ardmore Studios. The latter is potentially prime real estate and there have been attempts to rezone it. Whoever gets it rezoned will make an absolute fortune. There may be a material interest for the owners of Ardmore Studios and Troy Studios in redirecting investment and production to the latter at the expense of the former. I do not raise this as a parochial matter, as I would argue that the local concerns about employment and the tradition of Ardmore as effectively the national studio are also national issues. The bigger questions are whether this could happen and would it be desirable? It would be desirable for some, but not for the development of the film industry as a whole.

We should stimulate the development of film production in places other than where it is currently being done. It might be of interest to the Minister to note something in this regard. I attended one of the pre-screenings of "Black 47", the director of which said something interesting when speaking about the production. He basically said that the film did not really work out quite as he had wanted, as the production did not have sufficient investment. Interestingly, it could not afford to go to Mayo to film parts of "Black 47" as desired. A digital landscape had to be used for part of the film. I do not know whether people have seen it. Do not get me wrong - it was a great effort by the writer and director to do what they had to with limited resources, but the director said that, for the lack of €50,000, the production could not go to Mayo. This film about the Famine, which is a seminal moment in Irish history, was made on a shoestring. I will not go into the other issues that arose on the employment front, but many of them also revolved around a lack of investment and so on.

To cut a long story short, if we want to develop the Cork film industry, a film industry in Connemara and a film industry in Limerick while maintaining the industry in places like Ardmore and Dublin, and given the suggestion made by some film workers in my area that we should build a film studio in the old terminal building on Dún Laoghaire pier - it is not a bad idea, as the terminal is almost ready made for it-----

See this speech in context