Ireland
Ireland's co-production corridor with Canada is one of the most naturally productive in the treaty network. The countries share a language, a storytelling tradition, and a diaspora connection that runs centuries deep. The 2016 treaty — one of the more recently modernized in the system — sets a 15% minimum contribution, among the lowest in any Canadian bilateral. Screen Ireland actively promotes international co-production as core strategy. And since Brexit, Ireland is the only English-language corridor in the Canadian network that retains full EU membership — with everything that brings, from Eurimages access to Creative Europe eligibility. Seventy-two co-productions since 2003 is a track record. The corridor is proven.
Irish production spend reached a record €544M in 2025. Section 481 applies solely to qualifying Irish expenditure. Canadian CPTC and provincial credits apply solely to eligible Canadian expenditure. Each territory claims on its own spend. Eurimages (which Canada joined in 2017) may provide additional co-financing for qualifying projects.
Ireland's production infrastructure has scaled rapidly. Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow — the historic flagship — operates eight soundstages totalling over ninety thousand square feet. Troy Studios in Limerick is Ireland's largest facility, with roughly one hundred thousand square feet of stage space and a five-acre backlot on a twenty-six-acre footprint. Between them, Ireland has doubled its stage capacity in recent years to meet international demand, and the country reached a record €544 million in production spend in 2025.
The crew base is deep relative to the country's size and widely regarded as world-class, particularly in period and heritage production, location shooting, and English-language drama. Screen Ireland's National Talent Academies delivered over 6,500 skills placements in 2025 alone across live-action, animation, and VFX. Specialized post-production capacity is the main constraint — Dolby Atmos mixing stages and certain regional crew pools are noted as occasional pinch points — but the overall workforce is experienced, internationally proven, and nearly self-sufficient.
Screen Ireland (formerly the Irish Film Board) is both the primary public funder and the co-production certifier. It provides development funding, production loans, and a dedicated creative co-production strand offering up to €350,000 for features, with higher amounts available for minority co-producer scenarios. Screen Ireland's current five-year strategy (Fís Athnuaite 2025–2029) emphasizes collaborative international storytelling and European partnerships as core priorities — co-production is not an afterthought in Irish film policy, it is the stated direction.
RTÉ and Virgin Media Television act as broadcaster-financiers, particularly for television drama and co-productions, providing the broadcast commitment that often anchors the Irish financing side of a project.
Irish production companies with international co-production track records in the kind of register Rubedo is interested in include Parallel Films, whose credits include Maudie — the Canada-Ireland co-production that remains the corridor's signature example; Tile Films, behind Death or Canada; Sepia Films; and ShinAwiL. The Irish independent sector is small enough that relationships are accessible and large enough that the expertise is genuine. Maudie, French Exit, My Salinger Year, and multi-territory projects like The Breadwinner and Room demonstrate the range of what this corridor has produced — from intimate character study to animated feature to literary adaptation.
Why this corridor
Rubedo is building infrastructure for cross-border creative collaboration. Not a single film — a network. Canada's co-production treaty system covers fifty-seven territories, and the thesis is that gold denomination makes the entire network navigable as unified infrastructure for the first time. Ireland is one of the corridors where that infrastructure meets the deepest cultural resonance.
The Canada-Ireland relationship runs through centuries of shared migration, language, and storytelling. The database is built to document that history — what Irish creative work cost, what it was worth, measured in a unit that makes every entry comparable across territories and centuries. We are particularly interested in this corridor for documentary work exploring the economics of Irish creative production from monastic manuscript illumination through the Literary Revival to the contemporary screen sector's approach to heritage content production.
The Scéal uplift at 40% for lower-budget features, combined with a 15% minimum contribution threshold and Canadian CPTC on the Canadian side, creates one of the most efficient incentive architectures in the treaty network for lean, theatrically-oriented production. Ireland's EU membership adds Eurimages as a potential co-financing layer that the UK corridor cannot access. The corridor is culturally frictionless, financially efficient, and structurally proven. Maudie demonstrated what it produces at its best — intimate, historically grounded, and internationally respected.
Ireland is one of fifty-seven territories in the Canadian co-production treaty network.
Where to start
If you're a researcher, student, or early-career filmmaker interested in this corridor, here's what we know about where to begin.
Start here
Email Screen Ireland's inward production team at inwardproduction@screenireland.ie with a one-paragraph summary of who you are and what you're exploring. This is the single point of contact for incoming international producers. They will advise on logistics, connect you to potential Irish partners, and point you toward relevant funding strands. They respond quickly and have helped many first-time international teams.
Screen Ireland's website (screenireland.ie/filming) includes a dedicated international co-production page confirming the Canada treaty terms and practical guidance. Screen Producers Ireland (SPI) maintains a fully searchable directory of Irish production companies by genre and format at screenproducersireland.com — the most direct way to identify potential partners before making contact. Cold emails referencing a Screen Ireland connection or a shared festival contact are common and often answered.
The Galway Film Fleadh
The Galway Film Fleadh (July) is Ireland's premier industry gathering and the single best event for a Canadian producer looking to enter this corridor. The attached Galway Film Fair Marketplace is where co-production conversations happen: up to fifty projects are selected each year for pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings with financiers, sales agents, distributors, and producers. Applications open months in advance.
Galway combines festival screenings, a structured co-production marketplace, networking events, masterclasses, and pitching sessions in a single week. The scale is human — small enough that conversations happen naturally, large enough that the right people are in the room. For an early-career producer with a treaty-eligible project and a clear reason to be looking at Ireland, Galway is where the relationship starts.
Bilateral programs
The Emerald Lens initiative is the flagship Canada-Ireland bilateral program, run by the Irish Consulate in Vancouver in partnership with Screen Ireland, Culture Ireland, and Tourism Ireland. It delivers spotlight screenings and panels at the Whistler Film Festival, and — most importantly — the Producers Lab International, which sends selected Canadian producers to the Galway Film Fleadh for immersive meetings followed by four months of mentorship concluding at Whistler. This is application-based and designed for early-career producers with a feature or documentary project. It is the most direct structured pathway from Canadian interest to Irish co-production relationship.
Ireland x Ontario at TIFF is an annual industry day organized by Screen Ireland and Ontario Creates — a full day of panels, incentive presentations, and producer speed-networking, introduced by the Irish Ambassador. The Irish delegation typically brings eight to ten companies. Registration is through Ontario Creates.The Limerick Film Lab is a newer initiative that brought producers from Ireland, Scotland, and Canada (Newfoundland and Labrador) together for a week of intensive collaboration in Limerick in 2025, with the first slate presented at Edinburgh. Future rounds are expected — a program worth monitoring for producers interested in Atlantic Canada-Ireland connections specifically.
Other industry events
Animation Dingle (March) is the entry point for animation co-production. Now in its fourteenth year, it runs a full industry conference, studio fair, pitching sessions, masterclasses, and portfolio reviews with a strong co-production focus. Very accessible for students and early-career animators. Ireland's animation sector — anchored by studios like Cartoon Saloon, Brown Bag, and JAM Media — actively seeks international partners through events like this.The Dublin International Film Festival (February) has a growing industry programme in partnership with Screen Ireland, offering panels on funding, distribution, and international sales. Not a full market, but useful for networking and understanding the Irish funding landscape.
Screen Ireland attends major international markets — Cannes, Berlin, AFM, and TIFF — with delegations, running co-production forums and facilitating introductions. They do not operate a fixed Irish pavilion, but their presence is active and accessible. Emailing the inward production team before attending any of these events is the most effective way to ensure the right meetings happen.
Canadian institutions
Concordia University in Montreal hosts the only dedicated School of Irish Studies in North America, offering courses that include Irish film, television, and theatre. The long-running Ciné Gael Montréal Irish film series — the largest in North America — screens at Concordia's de Sève Cinema with guest speakers including visiting Irish filmmakers. For students exploring this corridor, Ciné Gael is a direct connection to the Irish filmmaking community from a Canadian campus.The Canada Ireland Foundation in Toronto is developing the Corleck Building as a new cultural hub with audiovisual facilities. Irish consulates in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa run cultural programming and actively support film — the Vancouver consulate's role in the Emerald Lens initiative demonstrates what this support looks like in practice. Contact the cultural officer at your nearest consulate for introductions and event information.
Saint Mary's University in Halifax and other institutions offer smaller Irish studies programs. Irish film screening series operate in several Canadian cities through consulate and festival partnerships.
A note on the Irish industry
The Irish production community is small and relationship-driven, which can feel like a closed shop from the outside. It isn't. Screen Ireland's inward production team exists specifically to open the door. The Emerald Lens Producers Lab exists to walk you through it. The SPI directory lets you see who's on the other side. Irish producers are genuinely approachable — the "closed shop" feeling disappears at Galway or over a Zoom coffee with someone Screen Ireland introduced you to.
The practical pathway most Canadian producers follow: email inwardproduction@screenireland.ie with a project summary, search the SPI directory for three to five matching companies, and apply to the next Emerald Lens Producers Lab or Galway Film Fair Marketplace. Three steps from interest to relationship. This corridor rewards initiative.
If you're a filmmaker, producer, researcher, or institution in Ireland — or anywhere — and any of this is interesting to you, we'd like to hear from you.
contact@rubedo.ca