Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Agreed. I welcome the Minister to the House. Unfortunately, I missed his speech because I was at the Mass for the late Minister of State, Deputy Shane McEntee, but I am sure it was insightful as always.

The Gathering was officially launched in Clare on Sunday. There were not hundreds of people at it, but thousands. It was heartwarming to see how ordinary people have engaged with the project. Basically, there was a launch and an expo, where every community put on an exhibition of the events that are taking place within their community for the year of The Gathering. The organising committee had prepared 500 visitor packs containing biros and other bits and pieces for this event that took place between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday, and they were gone within an hour.

There has been significant buy-in by the community in County Clare, as there has been in the community in general. For County Clare and along the west coast, The Gathering is more important than it may be in other parts of the country because we are so heavily reliant on tourism. There is such a requirement for employment in the tourism sector to keep families going - to keep young people in university, college, etc. When there are the bones of 873,000 people visiting the Cliffs of Moher visitor experience in a year, County Clare has a significant responsibility to ensure that it is professional about how it goes about its business in the year of The Gathering.

Clare has appointed a number of high-profile ambassadors for The Gathering, such as Ms Aoibhinn Garrihy, the actress on "Fair City" who is from Doolin, Mr. Marcus Horan, the rugby player, and Mr. Martin Hayes, the internationally acclaimed violinist, and others are coming on board.

Most organisations and communities are running events. I would like to see more buy-in from golf clubs because they have thousands of international members. I am in discussions with my local golf club in Lahinch to see what it can do to create a free week for its international members, perhaps in the latter part of the year. As leaders in our communities we all have a responsibility to motivate and encourage people to organise events. There may be old festivals which no longer exist. Why not reactivate them for the year of The Gathering? What is great about The Gathering is that it will be successful, and depending on how successful it is I would like to see it repeated in four years time. The Homecoming in Scotland is repeated every four years. The Gathering is very much based on this experience so there is no reason if it is successful, as we suspect it will be, that at the end of 2013 we cannot start planning for 2017. I will finish on this hopeful thought.