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Seanad
‹ An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

EU Presidency priorities and county pairings

Summary

Senator Conway welcomed the Government's EU Presidency priorities on security and AI, and the new county pairings for schools and community groups.

I welcome the announcement yesterday of our priorities for the upcoming EU Presidency in the whole area of security and AI. I also welcome the county pairings that were announced by the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, this morning. That is great because it creates buy-in with schools, community groups and sporting organisations into the whole Presidency. This is a huge opportunity for our country to showcase everything that is good about it. I am delighted that my own county of Clare is paired with Croatia. I certainly look forward to engaging with the Croatian ambassador here in Ireland. Hopefully, we will have some Croatian parliamentarians visit the county. That is good news. Every county is paired. I believe that the Leas-Chathaoirleach's county is paired with Germany. That is sehr gut. I am sure that there will be a lot of interesting things in the city of Limerick during that period.

I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne. In recent weeks, he has been in here. He gave a fantastic overview of the preparations that had gone into the Presidency and, indeed, the programme of activities and work that will surround it. It is not all about business. There will be cultural and sporting initiatives and so on as part of the Presidency. It is such a wonderful opportunity. I hope the whole country buys into it, particularly schools, both primary and post-primary. I propose that we would have some specific debates around the Presidency. Ministers are going to be very busy, but hopefully we will have the Minister of State back here in the autumn to give us an update on quarter 1 of the Presidency. I ask for other Ministers as well to come in here and address us, particularly on the themes that are the priority of our six-month Presidency. I am looking forward to that. I hope that can be facilitated in the autumn.

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