Irish Language Broadcast Fund

The Joint Declaraction committed the Government to take the necessary steps to secure the establishment of a fund for financial support for Irish language film and television production.  This commitment was also contained in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

Northern Ireland Screen is delivering the Irish Language Broadcast Fund (ILBF) commitment through a sub-committee of its board.

DCAL is providing funding of £12 million over five years with a target of at least 75 additional hours Irish language broadcasting per year by 2008.

The Fund became operational in June 2005 and the BBC and TG4 have reported encouraging viewing figures for programmes already transmitted.  An independent interim evaluation of its first year of work has also reported encouraging figures regarding satisfaction with the work of the Fund.

A copy of the above evaluation by Deloitte MSC Limited is attached here (PDF format, size 1mb).