Diaspora Issues
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
============================================================

Joe Neville (FG), Kildare North

I am delighted that the Minister of State referenced college football because we have seen the tremendous impact that has had. Not only are we bringing the games but we are bringing people over. A lot of those people spend a lot of time in Ireland. The game offers a window to Ireland in America with huge numbers watching the games. They see the best of what Ireland has to offer from a sporting facility perspective but it also gives us the opportunity to promote ourselves the week before the season starts. The college football has been a tremendous boon to the economy and to how we promote ourselves. The Minister of State has referenced the sports but another way he has really reached out is through the promotion of the Gaelic games abroad and how we tie that in. The GAA really is a foundation stone for so many people who go abroad. The first thing they often do is look for the GAA clubs. However, we can bring the GAA under that umbrella and however that works best, it is important to keep those live connections between the people who might have just recently gone and the multiple generations in America.

---

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/2026-03-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-26