An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I was at the Tullamore Show and the ploughing championships, and the Fianna Fáil think-in was in Tullamore as well. It is all happening. I also went to Tullamore D.E.W. distillery, which has received €150 million in private sector investment in its extraordinary facility, which is linked to the farming community of the midlands and provides significant employment in the area. Offaly, Laois and the entire area is also becoming a potentially very significant energy hub, particularly for onshore wind, battery storage and so on. There is also rewilding and the placement of national parks potentially in the future, which is something I will look at. The Deputy talked about a possible new convention centre. Obviously, that would have to be fundamentally done by the private sector. The State has had a sort of a hit-and-miss engagement. The National Convention Centre took ages and it was complex.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16