I thank the joint committee for the opportunity for the Irish Film Board to present its perspective on the current Irish film financing environment. We are here to demonstrate the role of the Irish Film Board as an essential national film agency that supports and promotes all forms of Irish film making and how that role can be augmented by section 481.
I shall describe who we are and our role before explaining where the Irish Film Board fits into the film financing landscape. The Irish Film Board is a national screen agency of Ireland, under the aegis of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. It is constituted under the Irish Film Board Act 1980, section 4, of which outlines the board's remit to encourage the development of an industry in the State. In fulfilling its remit, the board supports a wide range of activities. The board's role has been enhanced greatly since the implementation in 2000 of key recommendation of the Kilkenny report, the Government's strategic review of the film industry.
Our role sees us directly involved in the creative process of Irish films from script to screen. This means that we, the Irish Film Board, provide loans and creative advice for the lengthy process of the development of scripts as well as providing assistance for production company development. Subsequently, we provide investment for the production and release of Irish feature films, TV drama and animation as well as for those normally outside the scope of section 481, such as documentaries, short films and lower budget film content. Some examples of the latter include the multi-award winning documentary, "Sabbath - Inside the Revolution" "Chavez - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", the low budget feature, "Goldfish Memory" and the Oscar nominated short, "Fifty Percent Grey". Out of this process the Irish Film Board projects, including Irish language content, have won more than 100 awards at key international film festivals, including Cannes and Berlin, not to mention the 20 awards won by Irish Film Board backed projects at last weekend's Irish film and television awards.
Also the Irish Film Board provides film culture programmes for regional Ireland, such as the popular CineMobile and Culture Cinema Consortium programme, and co-funds Screen Training Ireland to provide training to the industry. The Irish Film Board has also a location services unit which facilitates direct inward investment by promoting Ireland as a location for international productions which are generally attracted here by the existence of a tax incentive.
How does the board fit into the local film financing environment? Independent film financing is a complex international jigsaw puzzle and the remit of the Irish Film Board is independent of the section 481 tax incentive. Unlike section 481, the board funds script development. Later in the process the board provides strategic minority investments to assist producers to attract the balance of their production budget. Typically the board provides up to 15% of a locally produced film's budget and that, on occasion, can be augmented by a further 12% to the production budget under section 481. It should be remembered the board is often the initiating investor and helps to get the show on the road, as it were. We help producers attract other financiers to the project while section 481, when used on a local production, tends to be one of the last pieces of the financing puzzle to enable the local production to commence shooting. While section 481 is a financing source, the board, on the other hand, brings a creative and qualitative role to the whole production and development financing process. To illustrate this point, some 81% of local films produced with board finance in the past two years have been developed by the board, thus highlighting the agency's integral role in the whole process from script to screen.
The board strives also to ensure a steady flow of local production to enable employment and training of the next generation of talent. It is that talent who will often end up working on the bigger budget international inward productions which are attracted to Ireland in part by section 481. Therefore, there is a certain interdependence of the health of the local production industry, which is supported and nurtured by the board on the one hand and, on the other, by the inward international production sector, attracted to Ireland by both section 481 and the talent of our crew who, to complete this circle, have been nurtured by film board development and production initiatives in the first place. This leads us into looking at how the board interacts with the international production industry. The board's location services unit assists and encourages foreign producers to shoot large budgeted international productions in Ireland. The unit promotes the island of Ireland as a location and highlights the availability of section 481, depth of crew skills and so on to producers.
As a result of a buoyant international production sector in Ireland in recent years there has been an increase in the number of highly skilled Irish film technicians and an overall upskilling of the industry, as we heard from the other contributors to the joint committee. For example, as we heard from Ardmore, the health of the local production industry and that of the inward international production sector are inter-connected. The board's own use of its annual allocation to support local development and production is central to the ongoing growth of the local industry and, by extension, the local industry's ability to service the inward international productions sector.
It would be useful to summarise the characteristics of the present Irish film financing environment. The present financing structures allow Ireland to be in the mix with the other key preferred locations for mobile international productions which include Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. It is interesting that all those territories have a combination of national film agencies augmented by tax incentives. As previously mentioned, the Irish Film Board provides a crucial foundation for Irish productions to build a market credible level of domestic support which can be augmented by section 481 to enable Irish productions to meet minimum thresholds to trigger overseas financing. For example, this type of financing model allows Irish projects to reach the domestic financing thresholds to qualify for Eurimage EU co-production funding and bilateral European co-productions as we heard from Screen Producers Ireland this morning.
It is important to note that the Irish marketplace is characterised by several impediments or severe challenges for local producers seeking to finance Irish films. The first impediment is that this territory provides a lower level of subsidy funding to individual Irish films than in Australia, where producers can access up to 60% of their budget by way of subsidy, Canada where one can access up to 65%, the UK up to 43% and New Zealand up to 50%. The second impediment for Irish film financing is the lower level of support available from TV networks for film production in New Zealand, France or Spain where specific quota requirements stimulate TV investment in feature films. These factors make the Irish Film Board investment especially crucial to Irish producers.
It should be noted that not all Irish Film Board films receive section 481 relief. "Halo Effect", "Goldfish Memory" and "Headrush" are examples of Irish Film Board backed low budget features without section 481 relief. Nonetheless, the availability of a range of financing sources for Irish feature film production is critical to allowing the board fulfil its broad remit under the Irish Film Board Act on a budget that is modest by international standards, especially when compared to the €37 million per annum available to New Zealand's agencies, €47 million per annum for the Danish Film Institute, €131 million for Canada's TeleFilm, €88 million for the UK Film Council and €47 million for Australia's federal film agencies. Nonetheless, the board fulfils its cultural remit under the Act. The following are examples of this. The first and most pertinent for today is the board's role in the identification, development and support of Irish emerging Irish film talent, often for short and low budget films. Examples of internationally acclaimed talent to have got their start from the board include Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy, two actors who perhaps need no introduction, and the directors, Damien O'Donnell, Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan.
Neil Jordan is an interesting example, having started out with an Irish Film Board backed feature film, he was executive producer of "Intermission". "Intermission" was funded for both development and production by the Irish Film Board. It was directed by John Crowley who previously worked on the Irish Film Board's Beckett series and starred the aforementioned Cillian Murphy and Colin Farrell. Another example of the board fulfilling its cultural remit is the stimulation of sustainable development of local production companies via the company development initiative which has borne fruit with two feature films being financed so far. Another area of our cultural remit is meeting the NDP objective of boosting North-South co-operation with such initiatives as partnering with the Northern Ireland Film Commission, among others, to finance the popular CineMobile project. The project brings the latest local, foreign, Irish language and educational films to rural areas with no permanent cinema of their own. We also work closely with the Northern Ireland Film Commission to boost cross-Border feature production, yielding the present production of three feature films.
The board's focus on its socio-cultural obligations also sees a priority placed on the NDP objective of regional expenditure and development. Regional initiatives from the board include exploring, subject to available funding, the feasibility of a regional filming fund to further encourage producers to shoot Irish productions in regional areas. Similar schemes operate successfully in several Australian states. Another regional initiative is partnering with the Arts Council to fund the upgrade of arthouse cinemas in Limerick and Cork under the Cultural Cinema Consortium initiative.
The Irish Film Board participates also in the promotion and popularisation of the Irish language by funding Irish language content, such as short films and documentaries in particular with TG4.
I hope the joint committee has some sense of the central role of the Irish Film Board across many aspects of the Irish film industry, the full details of which are contained in our submission.
There has been a tenfold increase in annual local independent production in the decade since the reconstitution of the board. In this time the board's €33 million worth of production investments in feature films and TV drama have generated from €366 million worth of production activity across nearly 100 projects. The present Irish film financing landscape has seen the Irish Film Board apply its funds over a large range of development, production and culture programmes, many of which address NDP objectives. Because the board plays a crucial industry development role, the board, as Ireland's national film agency, offers an unique perspective on the realities of Irish independent film co-financing. Irish producers who utilise the board's development and production financing as the first piece of their financing puzzle do so against a backdrop of fierce competition for further co-financing from international sources. Compared to the combination of quota, subsidy and tax support available in countries such as Australia, UK, Canada, Denmark and New Zealand, the level of Irish Government support for film making is by no means excessive. For example, New Zealand, a country of similar size to Ireland offers €37 million annually in subsidies, in addition to its tax incentives and has recently reaped huge benefits from hosting the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Few developed countries have film industries operating without Government support. The Governments of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and Germany have recently increased their support for their film industries. Furthermore, having ratified the European Co-production Convention and other bilateral production treaties, Ireland needs to be able to provide adequate co-production financing, alongside its counterparts in the EU, most of whom have national film agencies augmented by tax incentives.
The board is an essential national agency for the promotion and development of the Irish film industry. The board believes the present suite of Government support mechanisms, which have been supported by successive Irish Governments for the film industry, have served Ireland well. They have allowed this country's film industry to punch above its weight in delivering employment for Irish crews and in delivering Irish stories as diverse as the "Magdalene Sisters, "Intermission", "Goldfish Memory", "Circle of Friends" and "Bloody Sunday", to name a few, to Irish and international screens.