An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10 ============================================================ Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel I extend a welcome on behalf of Fianna Fáil to the ambassador. I look forward to working with him. I extend a warm congratulations to all involved in Bloom this year. It was incredibly successful and I want to recognise the outstanding achievement of Newbridge native Joe Eustace, who won the gold medal at Bord Bia Bloom for his "Future In Mind" garden. The garden was also named best in the medium garden and planting categories. Joe is only 24 years of age. His dad Ken is very well known for his work in the business. Joe has demonstrated exceptional creative talent in the horticultural area and it is credit to him and all who support him. Kieran Dunne and Kildare Growers also had very successful exhibits at Bloom. The horticulture industry is incredibly important and I would like to see a debate in the House with the Minister on supporting Irish horticulture. The Special Olympics Ireland games start on Thursday, 18 June, with the opening ceremony in Tallaght. We will have 1,200 athletes from around the island of Ireland competing in 12 sports. There are 600 coaches and 2,500 volunteers involved in making these games an incredible experience for the athletes and all involved. They are just a fraction of the athletes involved day in, day out in local clubs, communities and centres. This is an important milestone because it is the qualifier for representing Ireland in Santiago, Chile, next year. I wish all the athletes the best of luck and thank everybody involved, including the 2,500 volunteers, in ensuring the games are a great success. I want to mention a visa application from a group of 20 dancers, musicians and youth leaders from the Lajee Center in Palestine who have applied for visas to do a cultural tour of Ireland. This has happened on a number of occasions. It is an important cultural exchange. Their visa applications were lodged last week to do a tour in July. I would appreciate the Acting Leader's support in terms of asking that these visas be dealt with in a timely fashion. We must do everything we can to make sure this can happen and to give a glimmer of light, life and hope to those 20 individuals. --- 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/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-10