Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This weekend, I was privileged to attend the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. It was my first in-person plenary session. I really got to see the benefits of the informal and formal engagement with members of the Parliaments of Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It was really great to be able to talk about the challenges that face us and the difficulties we are going through.

We all know that the bilateral relationship is not as good as we would like it to be but it was a positive weekend for parliamentary engagement. One of our first acts was to pass a resolution on the conflict in Ukraine. It was pointed out that it would be good to see the UK follow Ireland's actions with regard to visa restrictions.

It is hard to talk about everyday issues when such things are happening so close to home but I suppose we are lucky that we can so I am going to talk about another issue that is ongoing in Dublin 15.I want to raise another issue in Dublin 15. The Fine Gael Party is really focusing at the moment on making publicly-funded infrastructure open more for public use, such as schools being used for after-school activities for example. I see it in Dublin 15. A campus in Tyrrelstown has two primary schools, a community centre and a car park. The local community want to use that car park to facilitate activities in the park next door, which includes the cricket club and the park run but because of bureaucratic entanglement we cannot use it. We need to be sensible about these issues. We need to be able to overcome barriers so that we can use resources. Right now there is a group of people who want to build another car park because they cannot get access to one that is there. That to me is madness. A lot of work goes into these things, but sometimes one just has to call for common sense.