IRISH film companies have accused Bord Failte of snubbing them in the award of a £1.75 million advertising film contract which has gone instead to an English company. The advertising campaign, the largest of its kind involving Bord Failte, was awarded earlier this year to the Dublin-based Peter Owens Advertising Agency, which has contracted a London company, D-Films, to make the series of commercials which will be shot in Ireland over a 21-day period, starting next week.
The contract would have been "the plum job of 1996" for Irish companies producing commercials, according to Mr Kevan Barker of SIPTU's film and entertainment branch.
"It's bigger than the combined budget of two of the smaller feature films being shot in Ireland at the moment, and our members would normally expect to be working on it," he said.
"The upshot is that none of the big jobs on the most prominent commercial to be shot here this year will be Irish."
But Bord Failte has defended the selection process, saying that Irish directors were shortlisted before the final decision was made. The board has written to the representative body of the film industry explaining the process.
The project could have offered temporary employment to at least 40 or 50 people, according to SIPTU, which estimates that between 1,500 and 2,000 freelances were employed in the Irish film industry.
Mr Barker said that Bord Failte argued the campaign was a joint effort with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and other Irish tourism interests, and was part-funded by the EU.
"But if it's EU money, the selection process should have been open," he said.
"That was the case with the award of the contract to Peter Owens, but it doesn't seem to have happened with the award of the film contract."
A spokesman for the Peter Owens Agency said the company was "not at liberty" to discuss the contract, and referred all queries to Bord Failte.
