Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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318. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the reason employment in the computer games industry has not risen during his period in office; his plans to stimulate employment in this modern computer industry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33296/15]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The games sector experienced considerable growth in Ireland in recent years, with many of the sector’s largest global players having established operations in Ireland. The games sector in Ireland encompasses a broad breadth of areas for example the Irish operations of Activision and Culture Translate demonstrate the capabilities that exist in games localisation. The indigenous game studios demonstrate the games development, platform development/porting capabilities in Ireland (e.g. Digit, Six Minute Games). The strengths in technology development/middleware are evidenced by Havok (Intel), Swrve, and DemonWare (ActivisionBlizzard). The operations of Riot, Webzen, and Red5Studios highlight the broader publishing capabilities here. And, the customer service & community management activities in EA, Blizzard, Riot and Zynga demonstrate the ability of Ireland to support multilingual, pan-European, high end customer support activities.Ireland has produced exciting start-up companies some of which have had a major impact within the global industry, including Havok (Intel) and Demonware (ActivisionBlizzard) and Ireland continues to have a hotbed of very early stage start-ups and independent games designers, with new entrants every year.

Tracking of employment in the games industry and related activities is difficult to assess definitively due to data classification limitations in official statistics, and also the small scale of many of the independent Irish owned operations. Analysis undertaken by Forfás in 2011 estimated that total employment in the sector stood at around 2,200 having experienced a five-fold increase from a low base of an estimated 400 in 2004. This was driven mainly by rapid growth in foreign direct investment in the sector over the period, particularly in activities such as customer and technical support, community management and games localisation.

In tandem with this growth, there has also been considerable expansion within the broader consumer internet sector (including social media and mobile internet) to which a large part of the games industry is inextricably linked. Ireland now has a very strong Internet and social networking cluster in existence – thanks to significant investments in EMEA Operations Centres from leading companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, etc. A wider base of related activities can also be considered part of the games ecosystem, although it is difficult to assess the degree to which these are connected to the industry in Ireland; these activities include: software development, financial services, online gambling, information security, animation & film production, and creative arts (music, art, literature).

The talent base associated with this broad range of activities is a significant attractiveness factor in new games sector enterprise investments. Ireland also possesses a long history and tradition in technical and creative content development, through our innate storytelling abilities seen through the success of our animation industry to the international recognition of Ireland today as a centre of excellence for technology investment. Investment in Ireland’s broadband/internet infrastructures also has had a strong role to play in underpinning new activity in the games sector in recent years.

Since 2011, there have been a number of new investments by foreign owned games companies, the most recent being Kama Games, a global developer and publisher of social games for mobile platforms which is headquartered in Dublin who announced an expansion of up to 100 jobs over the next 3 years (announced July 2015). Others have departed the scene (such as Big Fish and PopCap) reflective of the ongoing disruptive competitive forces within the games sector globally.

The Irish owned element of the Irish games cluster is still relatively young by international standards but its reputation is growing and awareness within the investor community to the attractiveness of the Irish games sector is increasing. A number of Irish games startups (in middleware and content) have raised seed and follow on series ‘A’ funding investments over the last 24 months. Current exports from the Irish owned segment account for over 95 percent of their turnover and are oriented towards the UK and North American markets in the main. Linkages with international games publishers are key to the growth of the games content developers. The marketing of games is very expensive and publishers have the monies and users to enable a small Irish company create a hit game.

CEOs are collaborating in a structured way to grow the cluster to the next stage of international growth through industry representative groups such as Games Ireland. Indigenous indie developers have recently set up a new representative body called ‘Imirt’ ().

Subsequent to the publication of the Forfás Report on the sector in 2011 (The Games Sector in Ireland: An Action Plan for Growth), Minister Bruton, in the context of the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs 2012, established a Clustering Development Team (CDT) for the Games Sector on 25 July 2012 to support the implementation of actions called for in the Report. This industry-chaired group comprised representatives of leading Irish and multinational games companies based in Ireland, as well as representatives of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Forfás, IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, FÁS, HEA and the Higher Education Institutes/Colleges of Further Education.

The ambitions for the CDT are to drive ‘on-the-ground’ collaboration and networking by proactively developing relationships between the foreign and indigenous cohort of games companies, HEIs and related sectors along with seeking to influence the policy system. The CDT provides a forum for discussion of issues for industry, enterprise support agencies, the education system and policy Departments.

A series of specific actions set out in the Action Plans for Jobs have been delivered on since the establishment of the CDT. These included activities in order to heighten awareness within the sector of the existing R&D supports available to the Games sector. The enterprise agencies held a number of R&D supports workshops and issued an enterprise friendly guide on R&D tax credits which included examples of relevance to games companies. The Department worked with the industry members of the group to assess the case for introducing a new specific financial instrument/relief for the Games industry and in 2014, a proposal was made to the Department of Finance for the introduction of a refundable corporation tax credit for the games sector, along the lines of what has been introduced in the UK and France.

A further key area of activity for the group has been to promote the increase in collaboration between industry and HEIs/Training providers in terms of mentoring and course content. A pilot “hothouse” initiative for undergraduate and Post-Leaving Certificate courses was devised and run in late 2013, which saw students from games, animation and multimedia courses working in multi-disciplinary teams on projects supported by an industry mentor.

In order to promote industry engagement with the development of curriculum of games courses, a leading games expert visited Ireland for six weeks in September and October 2014 as part of a Fulbright U.S. Specialist Award in conjunction with the HEA and carried out master classes and curriculum reviews of Digital Games courses at a number of Irish universities and colleges. She also met with industry representatives and government agencies and had very constructive meetings with Minister English in respect of enterprise and Minister O’Sullivan in respect of education.

My Department continues to support the Games sector through the enterprise agencies, IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. As with other companies in the technology and creative sectors, games companies can avail of the direct supports provided by the enterprise agencies such as the Competitive Start Fund, Seed Capital, In-market and Management development, R&D funding and tailored company expansion packages. A range of financial instruments also exists to assist companies which are not sector specific.

A number of the existing venture funds have and will continue to invest in a range of Irish owned software related projects including businesses in the digital game space (Seed and later stage). Enterprise Ireland (EI) has also co invested. EI’s Competitive Start Fund (€50k equity) has also had a significant impact on the early stage indigenous games sector since December 2010. Over this period, EI has funded over 20 Games companies to date. The companies include Batcat Games, Bitsmith, Redwind, Tribal City and Gone Gaming. R&D support is available for companies as they mature to cash generating businesses. The cohort has also availed of a number of start-up management development programmes to date (including iGap& Sprint).

At the request of Government I am currently finalising a new Enterprise Policy 2025 strategy, which will identify a number of sectors/activities with future growth potential. The creative sector is one such example, of which the games industry is a part and we will work to ensure the employment growth potential of the sector is realised.