Departmental Strategies Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16 ============================================================ Paula Butterly (FG), Louth The Minister is exactly right. We have food and drink of the highest quality produced at a local level by great producers in County Louth. The core element to producing this food and drink is our farmers. Our farmers are struggling at the moment, particularly those in the tillage sector. I call on the Minister to co-ordinate and co-operate with the Minister for agriculture to ensure that from beginning to end, the chain is able to sustain a long-term food tourism strategy in County Louth and across the country. Without a good, strong agricultural sector, we will not be in a position to continue to produce the high-quality food and drink that we can offer tourists in Ireland. They then go home to America, France, Italy, Japan or South Africa and talk about the wonders of Irish food and drink. As a result, we have a strong export sector. --- 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/2026-06-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-16