Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to the welcome to our distinguished guest in the Visitors Gallery. My town, Newbridge, has a really good twinning with Bad Lippspringe in Germany. A group of about 70 will leave on Friday morning to go over and join in the festivities. Unfortunately, I cannot be with them on this occasion but have had many good trips there. I hope they all have an excellent time.

This is positive ageing week. It is important that we encourage our older people, who are not much older than me at this stage, to have a positive outlook on life, keep fit and healthy and engage fully with life. With that in mind, yesterday I had the opportunity to visit 80 people in Newbridge active retirement. I thank Brian Newman, the chairperson, for the opportunity to engage and talk about issues that are important to all of us in our community and country. We discussed many issues. One that merits further conversation is that as we get older, our nutritional needs change. Some of us develop allergies along the way too. Those who are coeliac - and there were a number of such people present yesterday - talked about the cost of gluten-free products. They are about twice the price of normal products. Gluten-free bread is about twice the price and it is the same for biscuits, cakes or anything of that sort. They feel, and I agree, that it is important we should look at some type of subvention for them. I would appreciate if we could take that up.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend an event at the invitation of the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, in the National Gallery. Women make up half the population but according to esteemed historian Bethany Hughes, they occupy only about 0.5% of all recorded history. The Minister has set up a committee, and fair play to her, to look at representation of women in our national cultural institutions, museums, galleries, archives, etc. We know women’s voices were marginalised historically so this is a welcome initiative to engage with that imbalance. I wish the committee well and maybe that is something we can look at again. The final point I want to raise is about how yesterday evening I had the opportunity to meet with residents in Suncroft Community, which is only a few miles outside Newbridge and Kildare. There is no proper bus service there. Senators will often hear me speaking about rural transport services and why we need to connect people, such as pensioners going to collect their pensions and young people needing to get the bus and train to third-level education. One mum is spending €20 per day on a taxi because she is working. Therefore, the upcoming budget will need to include sustainable public transport and our rural links.