Moving out to the regions is more expensive because local crew availability often thins, racking up accommodation and other overnight costs. The tax credit uplift compensates for this, while also — in theory — creating the regular job and training opportunities that would eventually mitigate the need to move in crew from elsewhere in the first place.
Aoife O’Sullivan of production company Subotica gave the example of two of her firm’s projects that received the uplift in 2021: the film Joyride, which was made in Kerry, and the television drama North Sea Connection, filmed in Connemara, which has just aired on RTÉ One. “I wish it would come back,” Eoin Holohan, a film location manager and non-executive director of Screen Guilds of Ireland, told the committee. “And that’s not just me being selfish as a location manager who would prefer to work [outside Dublin and Wicklow] more often. I think that people in the regions who want a career in this industry actually deserve it.”
The heartening geographical spread of productions seen of late is now at risk of contracting. Indeed, film and television productions that might previously have ventured across the country are already sticking to more cost-effective pastures, the State’s development agency for the film, television and animation industry has reported.
The linking of the uplift to the State aid map had also become an issue, as that State aid map has now been updated and excludes parts of Limerick, making the application of the incentive “messy and chaotic”, according to McGrane, to the point where it is questionable how valuable it would still be even if it wasn’t tapering off.