Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The money has been provided for Teach an Phiarsaigh, which is very important. In Leitrim, the OPW did an excellent job on Seán Mac Diarmada's house. There is an issue there with car parking, and it is to be hoped we can look after that. In Cloughjordan, the local community made a great effort and there is a very nice interpretative centre for Thomas MacDonagh. I have attended other events around the country. I was in Cork last weekend for a very good seminar. I want to recognise the work of UCC and what it is doing for the decade of commemorations, as are the other universities and high third level institutions.

In reply to Deputy Broughan, we are organising our own decade of commemorations in this country and, as I said, we are doing it in a very inclusive, respectful and tolerant way. We will not in any way be led by anybody else as regards how we are going to organise our commemorations. Where there are opportunities to commemorate our shared history, we will do that and we are doing that. However, we are going to do this in our own very independent way. To date, I think we have done it very well and we are going to continue along those lines. We will not at all be influenced by other commemorations but, where we can, we will certainly share. We will show proper respect to the people who died in 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War, and also to those Irish people who went to fight for Ireland, as they thought, in the First World War. They fought for Ireland in the First World War and they fought for Ireland in the War of Independence.

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