Dear Members, 

In a recent newsletter, I invited those who’ve had difficulty securing the Artists’ exemption to get in touch. Thank you to everyone who emailed in, and to those who were kind enough to share their experiences with me over coffee at the Fleadh in Galway. The predicament was the same across the board: screenwriters are being funded and paid for their (mostly movie) scripts but are deemed ineligible for the exemption because these scripts have not yet been produced.

Revenue’s interpretation of the eligibility rules simply does not reflect the modern reality of being a screenwriter; of being wholly reliant on funding to keep the wolves from the door, of waiting year-after-year for the stars to align so your script can finally go into production. That’s if it happens at all. Because if it never gets made, does that script you lovingly crafted, and were paid to painstakingly edit and re-shape, suddenly no longer constitute a piece of art?

This really troubles us here in the Guild.

So, we’ve started a dialogue with Revenue, who do fully understand our position, and have also met with a member of the Oireachtas Media committee to raise our concerns. We will keep you posted on any developments over the months ahead.

In other news, there are still a limited number of places available for Script Biz 2.0, so if you’d like to request a one-to-one online session with one of our experts on 28th July, please email [email protected] by this Friday, 24th July.

Finally, thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our recent writers’ survey. We expect to share a full breakdown of our findings over the coming weeks.

Take good care, 

Ciarán