Ireland was missing out on big-budget productions of movies and TV shows from streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime because a cap on a tax relief scheme was too low.
In a pre-budget plea, tourism and culture minister Catherine Martin said feedback from an official trip she made to L.A. suggested Ireland was simply not being considered because of its €70 million cap on tax relief for productions.
She said recent years had seen streaming companies in particular making ever-larger scale productions with correspondingly larger budgets.
In a letter to then-Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe last August, she wrote: “Feedback from Irish visual effects companies at my recent trip to Los Angeles, is that we are losing out to other countries in attracting major internationally mobile productions costing in the region of €100m. They do not consider Ireland, because of the cap.”