Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and apologise for being elsewhere, blessed with a toothache at the time. I appreciate that the Minister has a rather mixed bag of portfolios which make great demands on his time. However, the Polska Éire event is an example of the way he has managed to marry parts of the new community and a cultural event thereby breaking down the silos that sometimes exist, not least in Departments but also in the wider world where people often perceive politics being played in separate pieces. The Minister has successfully crossed over that. I am aware much of that is driven by his love of football, and it would be unfair of us not to acknowledge that because when people bring their personal passion and love of something to bear, it often encourages other people to come forward. People then know that the Minister is doing it for the right reasons.

The Minister has successfully married other areas of culture with his great love of football. I am sure there are many people around the country who genuinely appreciate that and as my colleague said, it is hoped the Polska Éire Festival will become an annual event which will be broadened to include other communities that have come to live in Ireland to be part of our culture and have an opportunity to share and learn from each other. In The Model art centre in Sligo, for example, members of the communities living in direct provision have had celebrations of their cultural interest in food at weekends. They did that to show us that we all enjoy eating, which is a great way to get people around the table to share food from another country and talk about how they make it thereby breaking down the barriers that sometimes exist. That is a small initiative. I ask the Minister to forgive me for not knowing whether he had a big food piece in this event.