Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to welcome the witnesses here today because they play such an important role in ensuring that we retain our identity. If we do not respect heritage and culture and support it, how are we to know how we got here? It is so important to know how the people before us survived and lived and for us to retain that.

For tourism reasons we need to protect national parks, heritage centres and related issues but we also need to protect our identity as a people. Music, storytelling and Irish dancing were practised by the generations before us and they are the people who brought us to where we are today. Storytelling was and still should be an important part of our culture. I do not know if anyone knows of Frank Lewis, a Kerryman who arranged a very important gathering of storytellers a month ago, which was attended by Professor Brendan O'Keeffe and many others. We must support such gatherings and ensure that that aspect of our culture is retained. Wherever one goes today or no matter what gathering it is, everyone seems to be on their mobile phone.