Byrne calls for more film funding

Actor and former cultural ambassador Gabriel Byrne has said the Government should stop treating the arts as a “minor interest or portfolio”.

He said more money needs to be put into developing the Irish film industry, which lacks a coherent vision.

“The Government has to sit down and study and internalise what their relationship is to the arts, not just sop it off with a few quick comments here or there,” he said last night.

Byrne presented the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival Volta award to Costa-Gavras, the director of his latest film Capital, set in the world of high finance after the crash of 2008.

“Films are a way of expressing our deepest self. They are also a way of drawing enormous money into the country,” he said.

Byrne declined to comment on another controversy he started in relation to the Gathering, which he described as a “sham” and a “shakedown”. and visionary film industry.”