Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

The Deputies know as well as I do that when Ministers go to these events, they want to do their business and get out of there as quickly as they can. Time is precious. A total of 160 meetings will take place during the Irish Presidency. Some of them will be held outside Dublin. The vast majority of them, including all of the informal ministerial meetings, will take place in Dublin. I remind the House that other events will take place. I am chairing the interdepartmental committee that is working on the plans for the policy side of the programme. Along with the Minister, Deputy Deenihan, I am co-chairing a preparatory group that involves all the key stakeholders for the cultural programme for the Presidency. Although it has a very limited budget, the cultural programme will be very exciting. There will be opportunities for towns and villages around the country to be twinned with towns and villages in other countries. The involvement of citizens at grassroots level is much more valuable than spending vast sums of money on bringing interpretation booths around the country to facilitate Ministers.

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