Seanad debates

Tuesday, 5 October 2021

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Tim LombardTim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to raise the issue of what supports are required in the budget for the film industry. In many ways the film industry could be supported in community and society and I have seen the benefits of that in the past six or eight weeks in west Cork particularly where Irish acting royalty came to the area to do the Graham Norton book Holding. It has been a wonderful series made by ITV in west Cork. You could walk down the street in Skibbereen and see Oscar-winning actresses walking up to you or you would have the pleasure of meeting the "Derry Girls" actress. It was a phenomenal sight to see for west Cork.

That has been the story of our summer in many ways, to be a location for such a prime film that one hopes will be very successful. There is an opportunity for every county to participate in this. We have so much to offer, whether it is the Cathaoirleach's county of Kerry and all the way up the west coast, we have beautiful scenery and locations. The knock-on benefit for our economy is actually millions of euro. Millions of euro have been spent in west Cork in recent weeks by this film company. We have the opportunity to roll that out throughout the entire country, so we need to have a dedicated policy to work to make sure we can get these production companies into Ireland because the knock-on effect for rural settings in particular is huge. It would be very important for the arts as well.

This is one of those issues we might look at in particular when it comes to the budget debate, that we put a special focus, if we could, on the film industry and the supports to be put in place to make sure it will be successful going forward.

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