Cross-Border Co-operation
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-19
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

These questions are on the shared island unit so I will keep it there.
Deputy Devlin raised Dundalk IT and Queen's University and I have explained this. With regard to Dublin and Belfast and the night-time economies, we are very anxious to really develop the Dublin-Belfast economic corridor. The councils are good. I get the point on the night-time economies. I will look at it in terms of what we can do.
To respond to Deputy Paul Murphy, COP is a bit outside the shared island unit but he got it in. When he speaks about "the big dairy farmers" - he is classic at this - he is pretending that medium-sized and small dairy farmers would be okay under him. What he is saying would wipe out dairy farming entirely. This is what he is saying and he should be honest about it. The Government has made its position clear on this.
I agree 100% with Deputy Michael Murphy that we need evidence-based, informed and objective research and data. The shared island unit has a separate strand for big funding where we commission the ESRI to do major research. It did one on school completion North and South. The North was higher. We now have an initiative under the shared island unit on healthcare.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-19