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Film and tourism executives from both sides of the Irish border welcomed a dozen Bollywood movie producers to persuade them to shoot films here, an Irish Film Board (IFB) spokeswoman said.

Bertie Ahern
© AFP/File Sebastian D'Souza

The visit is the first since Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern led a cross-border trade delegation to India in January and visited the heartland of the Bollywood industry, the city of Mumbai formerly Bombay.

The Bollywood film industry -- the name is a hybrid of Bombay and Hollywood -- is the largest in the world.

It has begun to use Ireland in recent years as a location for scenes in its melodramas that are full of fantasy, romance and glitz.

There were only three Indian films that involved Irish locations until an IFB delegation visited the country 18 months before Ahern's delegation.

Since then, parts of a further 11 Indian feature films have been shot here.

"While the US and European film industries remain the biggest and most important source of (the industry's) inward investment to Ireland, we are also very interested in developing relationships with Indian filmmakers," said Simon Perry, chief executive officer of the IFB.

"We have been working very closely with Tourism Ireland on the 'Familiarisation Trip', which involves a number of Indian producers visiting Ireland to see the wealth of locations we have to offer and to meet with Irish producers.

"The Indian film industry is a new and emerging market for us with significant potential and we hope that this will encourage the development of closer business links," Perry said.

The Bollywood producers met Arts Minister John O'Donoghue and were being taken to a number of possible location sites in scenic County Wicklow -- just south of Dublin -- that is known as the "Garden of Ireland".

They will also visit possible location sites in Northern Ireland.

Most of the Bollywood shoots in Ireland so far have been fairly small scale and involved just scenes from movies.

The IFB are hoping they can persuade the producers to make a full-scale film in Ireland.

Apart from being a new niche earner for Irish filmmakers, Bollywood films have a big tourism spin-off as they attract visitors from India.

Ireland gives special tax breaks to filmmakers.

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