Ronan McCabe takes stock of the health of Ireland’s animation sector

Speaking to EAJ, Ronan McCabe, CEO of Animation Ireland, discusses the current state of the animation industry, its strengths, and the challenges ahead. He outlines the organisation’s mission, its collaboration with key partners, and the initiatives aimed at maintaining Ireland’s competitive edge.

McCabe also delves into how the industry interacts with other media sectors, including VR, AI, and gaming, while highlighting areas for future improvement.

What is Animation Ireland’s main mission? What about its core activities?

Our mission is supporting and advocating for the continued development of Ireland’s animation industry. Our core activities are multifaceted. We represent Ireland’s excellence in animation content creation and production to national and international audiences.

We aim to position animation as a vital component of the country’s creative and screen industries and to present ourselves as a cohesive voice for Ireland’s animation studios. Besides, we advocate government’s, policy makers’ and stakeholders’ support for the continuous development and growth of a sustainable world-class animation industry by developing strong partnerships to drive innovation and deliver solutions to shared industry challenges.

Finally, we build competency in the industry through the development of programmes and initiatives with education and training partners and provide information and support to member studios in order to perform successfully in the global animation marketplace.

What about the org’s members, its structure and scope?

We have 44 member studios representing everything from full service studios with several hundred employees with numerous projects at all stages of development and production to one or two person ideas companies.

We have an executive team of three that reports to a Board. We also use single issue sub-committees to work on specific areas and then make representations to the Board.

What are the strengths of Ireland’s animation sector, and what about the areas that still need improvement?

Ireland’s strengths are the availability of the tax credit and the upfront payment, the educated workforce and our access to the EU for recruitment, our successes have put us on the map, the fact that we are a majority English speaking country, the quality and cooperation of our education and training sector, the support of our public service media, and the support of our Screen agencies and government bodies.

It’s only possible to raise modest sums in Ireland so we have to look further afield to get projects fully financed. Our banking sector is playing catch up with the industry so there’s room for improvement there and it would be great to see a Content Levy introduced under the AVMSD.

Meanwhile, Animation Ireland is lobbying for an increase in regional support and an increase in the tax credit for projects with a budget up to €20 million.

What about your main partners?

Our main partners are our broadcasters RTÉ and TG4; our funders, Coimisiun na Mean, Creative Europe, Northern Ireland Screen and Screen Ireland; our government agencies Enterprise Ireland and the IDA. We also work closely with government departments and Revenue, our local tax authority.

Moreover, we collaborate with our partners in VFX, gaming and live action on areas of collective concern with their respective representative organisations: Imirt for gaming, Screen Producers Ireland for live action production, VFX Ireland as well as the Composers, Directors and Writers Guilds.