I join my colleagues in welcoming the Cabinet's visit to Lissadell House in County Sligo on Wednesday. It will be an historic occasion. The members of the Cabinet will be visiting the home of Countess Markievicz. I pay tribute to Deputy John Perry who was instrumental in arranging the visit and put a good deal of work into it, with the Walsh family. I visited Lissadell in recent weeks since the visit of Prince Charles. It is a great place to go. It used to attract approximately 40,000 visitors who also visited the north-west coast, right along the Wild Atlantic Way. Lissadell House highlights once again what we can offer along the Wild Atlantic Way, taking in counties Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal.

I join my colleague, Senator Denis Landy, in welcoming the funding allocated to all the county councils last week. These allocations will provide funding for the local improvement scheme and the construction industry scheme, something on which we have all been lobbied during the past year to 18 months. It is important that money will be allocated to these schemes.

I concur with those speakers who have wished the Cabinet well as it decamps for a pleasurable visit to Lissadell House. The idea of the Cabinet meeting across the country is a relatively new departure. Perhaps when future Cabinet meetings are being planned and thought of in that regard, it might do us all some good if a Cabinet meeting were to take place in some of our urban areas in which there are poverty and homelessness and social deprivation just to show that there is another side to society. I am not making a political point-----

It is a political point.