West Enterprise Case Studies

Eo Teilifís, founded by Máire Ní Thuathail in 1989, is a television production company and media facilities provider. It is well known for producing the long-running Irish language soap opera Ros na Rún as well as making documentaries and other programmes for RTÉ, TG4 and other broadcasting stations.

“By setting up in An Spidéal, I fulfilled a joint ambition to move back to the West and to work in the Irish language,” said Máire Ní Thuathail.

“The pool of talented and suitably experienced people in the region is the critical success factor for the audio-visual industry and innovative training has been central to our growth”, Máire notes, “We are strongly committed to nurturing talent in-house, as well as supporting external training initiatives. Many of our writers have emerged from internal employees who were encouraged to move into creative disciplines. Every year, we have a policy of training one to two directors from the local area.”

“We also have close links with the media centre within Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), which runs excellent media courses, and we regularly take on second and third level students for work experience.” The firm praises the Skillnets initiative: Eo Teilifís is the promoting company for the Gréasan na Meán Skillnets programme, which provides training to 40 media companies based in the Gaeltacht. Máire expects that “The healthy clustering of small companies in the Galway area will help us face the challenge of the general international trend of consolidation within the audio-visual sector”.

Eo Teilifís received an initial employment grant from Údarás na Gaeltachta and in the early years also availed of EU and Údarás funding for training. Over the years, private investment and the BES scheme provided capital, and Enterprise Ireland is currently investigating potential export opportunities for the Irish audio-visual sector.

In 1996, Eo Teilifís collaborated with Tyrone Productions to win the contract for the production of the Irish language soap opera Ros na Rún, which is now in its tenth year of production.

The growth of the company has allowed it to invest in its own studios, and emerge as one of the main providers of studio and production facilities in Ireland. They have two studios, editing and audio post-production facilities as well as offices at their base in An Spidéal.

Eo Teilifís employs 14 full-time staff and upwards of 120 people on seven to twelve month contracts each year for the production of Ros na Rún and other programmes. Speaking about employees, Máire said, “The quality of life in Connemara is far superior to that in cities because of the strong community values, and the practical benefits of better housing and shorter commuting times. The nature of the industry means that we can accommodate freelancers who wish to work from home, and we also facilitate job sharing for people who need it.”

Eo Teilifís points out that being part of a local cluster is essential to the welfare of all of its constituent enterprises and networking has always been an important part of operations which has helped the company to build up its expertise.

The company finds infrastructure and access are more than adequate for their needs. They have the high speed broadband they require and have air access to Scotland and the UK quickly and easily. They have a policy of accessing business services within the Gaeltacht where possible and find the cost of doing business there extremely competitive.