Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is obviously disappointing that there was not greater involvement with regard to this content and the festival that was to be operated in Dundalk and north County Louth. Into the future, I would request that the Minister would take a hands-on approach to ensure engagement with Tourism Ireland. Other elected representatives from the area and I will follow through on this. We need to make sure that we do it together, and that we sell the entirety with regard to north County Louth, Dundalk, Faughart and Kildare. We should sell it on an international basis and equally ensure that there is a sufficient amount of funding to address this, particularly when we are talking about Government sources. We need to make sure that we do it in a proper, concerted way, that we get the best bang for our buck across the board, and that we do it with the utmost fairness and from the point of view of making sure we promote the St. Brigid's festival as best we can. That means that we do justice to both Louth and Kildare.

See this speech in context