Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. I was checking my diary and he will be glad to hear I will meet the president of the Normandy region. We do meet regional leaders as well as national governments. It is really important. It is an important focus for me and other Ministers do as well. I thank the Deputy for his work on the European Committee of the Regions. I totally endorse what he is saying in terms of more engagement from local authorities at the European Union. That is necessary in the context of funding, which he rightly identified. It is also important for people to people and business to business contact for economic development and growth. If there are particular companies in one's county, any links representatives may have with their home countries would be very useful. I totally endorse that and think it is very important. At a time when we have become a significant net contributor, we need levers at all levels of the State to be pulling down European funding and that includes local government. It is really important.

Deputy Murphy asked whether the Presidency will be well resourced. It is a commitment in the programme for Government that it be well resourced, and it will be. There will certainly be significant costs to the Presidency. Only some 10% to 15% of the costs will be on what will be mostly visible to people, and that will be the leaders' meeting and the informal ministerial meetings. They cost about 15% of the overall costs. This is why I was slightly taken aback by someone suggesting this could be symbolic. Most of the cost is below that. It is really staff costs for those people who are negotiating within or on behalf of the European Union. We heard from one Department last week at our internal planning meeting, of which we have had 17 - they go back before my time - planning the Presidency. There is already one Department looking at a document management system that will need to be installed for the Presidency for negotiations it expects it will be carrying out at an international level on behalf of the EU. It is that level of work, detail and cost that we take on for that period and it has the potential to give us enormous prestige and enormous success. Previous Presidencies have generally speaking been judged very successful.

We will have over 250 meetings and they will take place throughout the country. In 2013, they were almost all in Dublin. In 2004, they were almost all around the country. This time, it will be somewhere in the middle. The 25% of meetings specifically refers to the ministerial informal meetings, of which there will be 22 in total. There will be other high-level conferences on various thematic issues, which will probably attract more people to them than ministerial meetings, and there will be lots of meetings of civil servants trying to work out European Unions laws, essentially. There will also be a cultural programme. The Deputy mentioned his constituency. Certainly, Brú Ború is a very important cultural centre and he may want to let the OPW or Culture Ireland know that Brú Ború or somewhere like that is available. I do not know all the places in the Deputy's constituency. He should let the OPW and Culture Ireland know. We certainly want to show culture.

There are practicalities about hosting meetings in Ireland of which we also have to conscious. Airport access is very important. It is not just an airport; airport access to continental Europe is really important. That is a factor. Security is a factor and we will have to take Garda advice, particularly on certain meetings that can only be held in certain places. Dublin Castle itself is a pretty good venue. Some of the costs of the Presidency will relate to upgrading Dublin Castle. That has happened in advance of previous Presidencies. Not much is done until the Presidency is coming up and it comes under that. It has happened before. Also for certain meetings, particularly at ministerial level and certainly at leader level, not many venues in the country can host them for reasons of security, logistics or numbers. The OPW has been appointed by the Government to be the conference sourcer or conference provider and it will do that in accordance with the Government's mandate, which is to have 25% of the meetings outside of Dublin. The rest of the ministerial meetings will be pretty much be in Dublin Castle. The OPW will do that job and it will do it well. We will keep in touch and its representatives will sit at our meetings. There are so many different aspects to it.

The Deputy mentioned local government. It is very important. As part of our consultation, I started on Friday with a soft launch in Kildare. I visited some schools and I also had a public meeting in Naas Town Hall. The county manager, officials and the chairperson of the county council were there, along with members of the general public. We had an open forum for about an hour or so as part of my visit to Kildare. Those visits will continue. No doubt there will be one in Tipperary and I may go back to the old counties and do one in north and south Tipperary. We will see. They are geographically apart. I am more than happy to do that. It is so important for us to hear the voice on the ground and the voice of the local authority represents that.