Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2025-11-26 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central -----is a sacred right in this country. We should cherish that and we should never do anything to damage it, nor should others. I think I have dealt with the issue Deputy Bacik raised in my general response. I do not believe a citizens' assembly is the right way to go. Deputy Conway-Walsh spoke about the cancer consortium. I helped to set that up originally. We are supporting it. On congenital heart disease, there was a very good agreement and there are cross-Border health initiatives including, for example, an initiative to treat children's hearts in Crumlin. There is more we can do. There is a cancer centre at Altnagelvin. I do not know if the Deputy has seen that. The Republic provided a lot of funding for that. There are also other services. I am all for that. We are researching whether we can provide better primary care services North and South and whether hospital resources can be combined. Deputy McGreehan made a point to me about two hospitals, one of which was Daisy Hill Hospital, where more stuff could be done. We have been working on that through various initiatives. I am all for that. We will continue to do that in conjunction with the ESRI and NESC. I have given my views on the issue raised by Deputy Eoin Hayes. We have established all-island forums through the shared island initiative. Through that initiative, we have created a climate and biodiversity network, an all-island women's forum and an all-island youth forum where young people get together and talk about the future and about their lives. We have also developed the first all-island music archive, combining music from different traditions in the one archive. That is being funded through the shared island unit. There is a lot happening on the ground. People are just getting together. I was at an event two weeks ago. It was fantastic. People from east Belfast were doing tapestries with people from Inishbofin. Some of them had never been in the Republic before. Some of those from the South had never been in the North. We have a long way to go but we need to do this right and properly. To respond to Deputy Conor McGuinness, is maith an rud é go bhfuil an coimisinéir teanga nua ann sa Tuaisceart. Tá Acht ann anois. Tá reachtaíocht curtha i láthair. Is dócha go bhfuil an-chuid oibre le déanamh ag an gcoimisinéir chun é sin a chur i bhfeidhm. Níl an reachtaíocht sin lán-cosúil leis an reachtaíocht atá againn anseo. Más féidir linn aon tacaíocht a thabhairt dó agus do ghluaiseacht na Gaeilge sa Tuaisceart, beimid sásta é sin a dhéanamh. Tá a lán déanta againn ach táimid sásta i bhfad níos mó a dhéanamh. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:22+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-11-26