Hundreds of people from national and global news outlets attended the Fís TV Summit in the Radisson Red, Galway City last week, when it was claimed that Irish language drama is now on the international stage.
The event was told that international audience for Irish language drama can be captured if the industry takes advantage of tapping into diverse markets and wider funding opportunities. This was the message of the summit, organised by Ardán, a registered charity based in the CREW Enterprise and Innovation Hub in Wellpark, County Galway.
The event, now in its eighth year, has hosted many well-known guest speakers and panellists. The hit Irish TV show “CRÁ” was a focal point of the event. In the words of Máire Ní Chonláin, Commissioning Manager of TG4, the success of a series like CRÁ has put “the Irish language on the international stage”.
CRÁ, while being shot in Donegal, is a Galway success story. The show reached a worldwide audience within a very short time. Many global newspapers such as The Guardian has praised the series as “an Irish take on the Coen brothers’ blackly comic crime series Fargo”.
Julie Clark, Director of Production, ITV Studios, noted that British production companies are beginning to see the value of working in Ireland. She said film crews here are often “more adaptable and more flexible” than crews in the UK.
Marc Lorber, the founder & Executive Producer at The Art of Coproduction, told the conference that Ireland, being both English and Irish speaking, being a next door neighbour to Britain itself and being a full EU member, was a huge advantage to securing co-production, accessing diverse markets and wider funding streams.
The idea of a collaboration was also emphasised for the Irish TV Unscripted sector, which covers light entertainment, reality TV, sports broadcasts, and documentaries. Shinawil’s Larry Bass said “2024 had been a challenging for the sector with various factors, including shifts to online, cutbacks and reducing available funding.”
However, there was optimism that the newly introduced Section 481 tax incentive for non-scripted TV production has the potential to generate sustainable jobs in the industry.
“We’ve got Europe’s first unscripted tax credit coming and it’s going to radically alter the way the Irish market is perceived internationally,” said Jamie Macken, Director of Business Development & Corporate Affairs at Bigger Stage.
A proposal was also made for a unique talent show concept whereby audiences could interact with authors and their narratives in real time, as a way of delivering unscripted entertainment in a fresh manner.
“We are punching above our weight and we can keep going,” said Jackie Larkin, founder of Newgrange Pictures.
“We’re in Europe, so there’s lots of opportunities that we need to keep tapping into. We’re English speaking and Irish speaking, so we just need to keep working those methods.”
