The benefits of filming in Ireland
Ireland is a great choice for filmmakers as it offers a unique blend of stunningly diverse landscapes, vibrant cities and a rich cultural history. Ireland is also a great place to make a film because of its low corporate tax rates, generous grants and incentives, and the fact that it is a film-friendly country. Additionally, the Irish film industry is thriving, with many talented directors, actors, and crew members to help bring a film to life.
Beyond a depth of production crew talent and a technical infrastructure that includes some of Europe’s biggest film studio facilities, Ireland also possesses many other reasons to make it the destination of choice for an international Film, Television or Animation production.
Ireland’s Competitive Film Tax Incentive
Since 1994, successive Irish government’s have supported and grown Ireland’s Film Tax Incentive. Today, Section 481 is one of the world’s most attractive film tax incentives and it has been an incredibly stable presence in the international film production industry. The current outlook is that this tax incentive is going nowhere and will benefit many more productions into the future.
Some headline benefits include:
- The option of 90% of financing being paid out upon closing of financing for the production. In other words, production receives a large portion up-front, it’s very cash-flow friendly and saves on gap financing.
- Cast and crew from abroad are eligible expenses on arrival in Ireland
- Goods and services are deemed eligible
- There is a €70m euro cap on the project so it has a very high ceiling helping big production.
Additionally there is a regional uplift (5% extra in 2021, 3% extra in 2022 and 2% in 2023) increasing your tax incentive when placing the production in certain regions within Ireland.
There are three different potential caps to the incentive available and you can find out more about how these caps affect your finance plan here.
Studio Facilities in Ireland
With three large-scale studios and plans to expand and create more, Ireland possesses film facilities and ambition to cater for feature filmmaking and television production of the highest level. In addition Ireland is home to some of the world’s leading VFX and post-production houses and is also a hotbed for animation studios all utilising state of the art equipment and techniques.
Film Crew in Ireland
Over the past 70 years, Ireland has been home to some of the world’s biggest film and television productions. From Ryan’s Daughter to Game of Thrones, this has meant that thousands of people have chosen a role within film production as a full-time career allowing them to gain extensive and diverse experience working at the highest level. With our own dedicated film school and a national professional development programme (Screen Skills Ireland), the depth of our crew has continued to deepen over the past few years and Ireland is increasingly recognised as having world-standard production crews. A notable benefit is that Irish crews are all English speaking.
Film Locations in Ireland
Castles, cliffs, rivers and sea. As a self contained island, Ireland contains an extremely diverse range of potential locations for film producers to utilise. Our history has had many influences, both rural and urban, allowing for an architectural landscape that is diverse. Cities make way to green fields, rugged landscapes and spectacular buildings and with visiting film crews a common presence in Ireland all new productions are welcomed with open arms. Our natural landscape is world famous and unrivaled backing up our international reputation as the Emerald Isle.
If you are interested in bringing your next production to Ireland then get in touch.
