Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday was a good day for my county. An Chistin, which is a food hub in the town of Castlerea, was granted almost €700,000 extra by the Government, through the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, to start food business incubation units. This is driven by the community and the people on the ground. It is a bottom-up approach, which is very welcome.

That comes on top of an extraordinary allocation of almost €2.2 million in sports capital grants for 51 sporting interests in the county. I am sure the Acting Leader will agree that there is good delivery to rural Ireland at the moment. That is the type of delivery we want. If the money is delivered for the projects there, the people in rural Ireland are well organised to do it.

I am not looking to have a row with anybody, but I urge the National Women's Council of Ireland, NWCI, to invite the women from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party – the Government parties - to its upcoming rally in a few weeks. What is going on is wrong. Many of those women have made significant contributions. For the sake of doing the right thing and getting the right message across, I urge the NWCI to please invite those women to the rally. Let us not have any debate about it.

It may have been covered yesterday, but I ask the Acting Leader to send a letter of sympathy to the former Cathaoirleach of this House, Brian Mullooly, whose wife was laid to rest yesterday. Her son was also a member of Dublin City Council for a period.