17/10/2017 - The initiative by Minister Heather Humphreys increases the available funding for 2018 by 9%

The Irish Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Amber Humphreys, has officially confirmed a substantial budget increase for the year 2018, bringing the Irish Film Board’s capital budget to €14.2 million.

The Irish Film Board, based in Galway, is the country’s national film agency and main film-funding body. Since the 1980s, the board has provided funds for the development and production of Irish films, television dramas, documentaries and animations.

This increase has been received enthusiastically by Dr Annie Doona, current chair of the Irish Film Board and president of the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), the national film school of Ireland. “We very much welcome Minister Humphreys’ consistent support for developing the potential of the Irish screen industries,” she said. “We look forward to continuing to work with Minister Humphreys on the Creative Ireland initiative to strengthen Ireland as a centre of excellence for film, television and media production.”

At the moment, the local film industry is on the rise and represents one of the main cornerstones of Ireland’s creative economy. Funding from the Irish Film Board contributed to creating more than 130 audiovisual projects and to employing over 7,000 full-time film professionals last year. To date, the joint work between the Ministry of Culture and the Irish Film Board has proven successful, as a number of auteurs are currently garnering international acclaim and their productions are achieving excellent box-office results. Some notable examples of this positive trend are the recent drama Maze [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see the news), Nora Twomey’s upcoming debut work, The Breadwinner [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], the international co-production Pilgrimage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Peter Foot’s The Young Offenders [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. This is the result of a carefully planned funding strategy, initially implemented in times of financial constraint and intended to promote Irish talents worldwide.