Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The shared island unit has real potential and has had real results and benefits for County Louth and the country, as the Taoiseach said, in terms of the arts, emergency services and biodiversity. Yesterday's announcement that Dundalk Institute of Technology, DKIT, will gain university status alongside Queen's University Belfast is incredibly exciting news. It will be transformative for the north east, and will be a really complementary match-up with Queen's University as well. This is a huge opportunity for the shared island unit to invest in the future, to invest in our young people and to invest in our economy and our industry.

I wish to ask the Taoiseach about the investment in people and about deeper health care co-operation with our neighbours in the North. There have to be synergies and opportunities there that we can look at with Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and even further afield in Dundalk. We can start looking at how we can look after the communities in the Cooley Peninsula, Carlingford and Omeath, and how we can reflect this in our usual daily life and health care. They do not match up at the minute and we can do more.

See this speech in context