A Quota Ireland Has Owed Since 2018
Coimisiún na Meán's public consultation on draft "European Rules for on-demand audiovisual services" closed on 17 June 2026, after the regulator pushed back its original 10 June deadline by a week. The rules, once finalised, will require every video-on-demand provider under Irish jurisdiction — Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and smaller niche platforms alike — to secure a minimum 30% share of European Works in each catalogue, and to give those works measurable "prominence" within their interfaces (Coimisiún na Meán).
This is not a new Irish invention. Article 13 of the EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive has obliged member states to impose this exact 30% floor since the directive was revised in 2018 to bring streaming services under the same cultural-policy umbrella as broadcasters. Ireland transposed that obligation via the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022, which also created Coimisiún na Meán as the successor to the old Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (Coimisiún na Meán legislation page). Eight years after the directive and four years after transposition, the regulator is only now settling how compliance will actually be measured.
The Case for the Quota, Stated Fairly
Before critiquing the mechanism, the underlying rationale deserves a fair hearing. Recommendation algorithms on global streaming platforms optimise for watch-time retention, and the content that wins that optimisation tends to be high-budget, English-language, US-originated programming with the deepest existing catalogues and marketing spend. Left entirely to market dynamics, European-language production — including Irish-language and independent Irish drama — risks becoming structurally invisible on the platforms where most viewing now happens, regardless of its quality. That is a legitimate cultural-policy concern, not a protectionist fantasy, and it's the same logic Ofcom applies in the UK, which retained an identical 30% European works quota after Brexit under its own on-demand programme service rules (EPRA/Ofcom guidance).
Where the Irish Draft Gets the Design Right
Coimisiún na Meán's draft has sensible edges. It exempts providers with low turnover, low audience reach, or narrow subject matter — sparing small niche services from compliance costs disproportionate to their scale — and applies a single national methodology rather than case-by-case negotiation (cnam.ie). That mirrors Ofcom's own exemption threshold for services below roughly £1.7 million in annual UK turnover, and it's the right instinct: a quota regime that treats a five-person arthouse platform the same as Netflix invites exactly the kind of disproportionate burden that erodes competition among smaller entrants.
Where It Goes Wrong: Counting Titles, Not Value
The weak point is the "title-based methodology" the consultation proposes for calculating the 30% share — counting the number of distinct European titles in a catalogue rather than weighting by runtime, investment, audience reach, or production budget. That metric is gameable in a way that undermines the policy's own cultural-diversity rationale. A platform can hit 30% by loading its catalogue with hundreds of cheap, low-budget, or archival European titles without commissioning a single new Irish drama or documentary — satisfying the letter of the rule while doing nothing for the production sector the rule exists to support. Ofcom's UK guidance takes a comparatively more flexible approach to the adjacent prominence question, explicitly calibrating expectations to "the nature of the service" rather than applying one rigid formula across every catalogue size and genre. Coimisiún na Meán's consultation document doesn't yet specify an equivalent flexibility for the prominence framework, which is the half of this rule most likely to visibly clash with how recommendation interfaces are actually built.
A Second, Unresolved Ask Compounds the Uncertainty
This quota-and-prominence rule is legally separate from Ireland's long-debated "Netflix levy" — a proposed financial contribution obligation, floated at rates between 2% and 5% of Irish turnover, that Screen Producers Ireland has pushed the government to adopt following its own commissioned feasibility study. SPI chief executive Susan Kirby has argued the levy is essential to sustaining a sector she says supports 15,000 full-time jobs, noting Ireland lags 16 other European countries that already impose similar levies (Screen Producers Ireland). As of last year's reporting, the government had not committed to it, with the responsible minister publicly questioning the case for passing costs to consumers (RTÉ). Streaming platforms now face two overlapping, only loosely coordinated Irish regulatory asks — a catalogue quota with a gameable metric, and a possible turnover levy with no settled rate — at the same moment Ireland is competing with the UK and other EU states to host production and platform investment.
The Proportionate Fix
None of this argues for scrapping the quota — it's an EU-law obligation Ireland cannot opt out of, and the underlying cultural-diversity goal is defensible. But Coimisiún na Meán should finalise a prominence framework calibrated by service type rather than a single formula, as Ofcom has done, and should weight the 30% calculation toward genuine investment and audience reach rather than raw title counts, closing the catalogue-padding loophole before it becomes standard industry practice. And the government should resolve the levy question on a clear timeline rather than let it hang indefinitely alongside the quota rules — regulatory ambiguity, not the quota itself, is what most discourages the investment this policy is ultimately meant to protect.