Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The idea behind the local authority meetings was to get as many people involved in 2016 as possible. Local authorities are the best way to reach out to the whole country. Each local authority will put together a draft plan which will be presented next month to myself and the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly. They will continue to work on that and their final plan will be produced later this year, possibly in October.

We are leaving it up to each local authority to decide on themselves. I believe it is better to get buy-in from the local communities. This is a from-the-ground-up initiative; it is not the case that a project team or my Department is telling people what they should be doing. We want people to come up with their own ideas on how they want to best commemorate 1916, reflect on the past 100 years as well as ambitiously look forward to the next 100 years. It is very much the case that plans will come from each county and I am looking forward to seeing them. We have given the local authorities all the details of our national plan. We are looking forward to seeing their plans in due course.

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