Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Senator Mullen. Like many of us, last night I watched the Brexit deliberations on the BBC. In the middle of all the shemozzle about Brexit, Orla Guerin - an Irish person and a wonderful journalist - was in Venezuela reporting on the campaign. The cameras showed the shops with absolutely no food and people, human beings, going through bins to try to extract something to eat. Ms Guerin interviewed a young family comprising a single mother of six children and the children were starving. Anywhere that the Government can intervene to try to help that situation would be most welcome.

We had a very interesting day in the Seanad yesterday when the president of the GAA came to the Chamber. It was a great initiative. I made a proposal for an all-party friendship group in Gaelic games. I plan on advancing this and I will email all Members next week for expressions of interest if they want to be part of that group. We will organise some sort of a meeting towards the end of February. That is certainly worth noting.

On Brexit and the effect on tourism, I commend the Cliffs of Moher visitor experience for an initiative yesterday that any new service level agreements with coach companies will include a rule on going to another fee-paying destination in County Clare, coupled with proof of an overnight stay. Any future coach operators will not get a licence to drop off and pick up at the Cliffs of Moher unless they can demonstrate that their guests have stayed a night in County Clare and visited another fee-paying attraction.That is what I call joined-up thinking. That is what I call using a gold-plated tourism facility to support silver-plated and other tourism facilities in the region. That is where a giant of a facility can help smaller facilities and sustain jobs, particularly in the tourism industry, especially given the imminent threat of Brexit to that industry.