Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I compliment Mr. Tony Connelly, with whom I shared a platform last year at the Centre for European Studies. There is talk about how the European institutions could be publicised better. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the institutions, the personnel and the infrastructure.

The European Parliament elections take place this year - the last ones were in 2009 and the previous ones in 2004. Coincidentally, those are the three years that Cork city has been hit by catastrophic flooding. The Minister of State mentioned an increased role for the Commission in this regard. County Cork has a population of almost 500,000 and the greater Cork city area has a population of 250,000 to 300,000. For the second morning in a row-----