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

-----a film studio on the Poolbeg Peninsula. To my mind, all these options would be good, but what would not be good would be us robbing Peter to pay Paul, with one area benefitting and others losing out.

Given that we have such a pool of talent at every level in this industry and the associated sectors, we should start looking at this matter in the way we look at theatre. The Abbey Theatre's existence is not an ad hocone based on tax reliefs, where it gets reliefs if it happens to put on a good production but otherwise disappears. Instead, we say that we want a national theatre as well as theatres in Cork, Galway, Dún Laoghaire, Limerick and so on. I do not know why we would not build studio capacity and a standing workforce that is trained and specialist in the various areas of film production in a few locations around the country. If we created that capacity, we would get much more State and external investment, allowing us to produce more and better films in a way that benefitted everyone. It might also end some of the scrapping that is going on in the background in the industry.

I would like to hear from the Minister whether he accepts that there is a concern about this measure inadvertently favouring just one or two locations, most likely Troy Studios, at the expense of everywhere else.

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