Frank Feighan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Lord Mayor is very welcome to the Seanad today. As she rightly said, it is an historic and symbolic occasion. The Seanad is much richer for having the Lord Mayor here and we need more of these new engagements and relationships.

I was thinking about Belfast and Dublin 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, Belfast was a larger city than Dublin but Dublin now has three times the population of Belfast. What has happened in Belfast in the 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement, and in the island of Ireland, has been truly significant. We must protect and enhance all aspects of the Good Friday Agreement.

I live in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the west. In terms of our links, 100 years ago Boyle was the home of the Connaught Rangers. It is a little known fact that 1,000 young men from nationalist Catholic west Belfast joined the Connaught Rangers to go to fight in the First World War. The 6th Connaught Rangers Research Group did a great deal of good work on that. I was not aware of that history until I became Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. At the time, the island of Ireland was effectively a single unit in the British Empire but 200,000 people from the island of Ireland went to fight in the First World War, 50,000 of whom died. Thirty thousand of those young men were from the Republic and we did not recognise the sacrifices they made, although in some ways we have come of age in that regard in recent years.

I want to pay tribute to Deputy Crowe of Sinn Féin who, as Irish Co-Chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, was in Westminster with fellow colleagues and laid a wreath with his British Co-Chair, Andrew Rosindell, MP. That was a hugely significant moment and I want to thank the Lord Mayor and the other people involved for making those gestures. They are not easy to make but they are very welcome.

My grandfather was from Boyle. One hundred years ago, he was on trial in Belfast courthouse for republican activities.Those links between my area and Belfast were the same. My point is that we are in a much better space. I thank everyone for making those sacrifices .

With regard to tourism, the island of Ireland under Tourism Ireland is incredible. In this regard, I often refer to the two Ts. When I go to the Titanic museum, I hear the voices of people from the Republic who would never have had any intention of going to Northern Ireland or Belfast but the Titanic museum gave them a reason to do that. I have visited Tayto Park twice and the situation is the same there in that I can see the number of people from the North who come down here because of the park. Those two facilities-----