Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Lord Mayor and I very much appreciate her taking time out of here very busy schedule to be here. I am a former Lord Mayor of Cork. There are only three cities that have that title, Belfast, Dublin and Cork. I am delighted the Lord Mayor is here as the role of Lord Mayor is about providing leadership right across the community. I know that she has been doing that since she has been elected to office. It is important that we work together on that role. We need to do much more on a joint approach between Northern Ireland and the Republic in terms of exchanges between local communities in different cities, with the farming, business communities, tourism and sport. We have made much progress over the last 25 to 30 years on that issue but we can do much more, especially with younger people.

When the Washington programme was set up young people from the Protestant and nationalist communities spent a period of time in Washington working together. It is something we should try to establish here, involving young people from Dublin and Cork and cities across Northern Ireland. It is a very educational and helpful and is something we should work on.

A number of years ago I was involved in an exchange between political groups in Northern Ireland and my area in Cork and it was very effective in understanding the difficulties and different challenges we face. Many of the challenges are the same in different parts of the country.

It is important to recognise how important the role of the Lord Mayor of Cork is. We lost two Lord Mayors in 1920. Tomás Mac Curtain was shot in his own home on the orders of the RIC and Terence MacSwiney who succeeded him and who died while on hunger strike in Brixton Prison. They were two tragedies for Cork but they showed the respect for the job of Lord Mayor of Cork city. One of the legacies Terence MacSwiney left was that while he was Lord Mayor, he visited every school in the city. That is a legacy that has remained to this day and it provides a huge opportunity for young people to engage with the political process. It is something we should develop in other areas, namely, that direct connection between those elected and young people as they come through the system. If one goes to school in Cork city, by the time one is finished in education, one has met 14 Lord Mayors. It is a huge opportunity for people to engage and it is something we should encourage.

I am delighted that the Lord Mayor of Belfast is here and I thank her for the work she has done to date as Lord Mayor and I wish her well for the remaining term of her office.