Apologies have been received from Deputies Seán Crowe and Timmy Dooley.
Business of Committee
On behalf of my colleagues, Chairman, I wish to record our appreciation of, and admiration for, the job you did this morning in presenting our two reports. You presented a very positive image of the committee to the country and, hopefully, to other countries through the web. It was a very successful morning and you deserve great credit for it.
Thank you.
I second that. You and your team - the clerk, secretary and others - did a very good job. It was streamed live. RTE contacted me yesterday and I confirmed it was happening. RTE was there today as well. It was very good and the streaming idea was brilliant. The fact that you opened it to our diaspora around the world allowed anybody who wished to get involved with the discussion to get in direct contact with the Chairman and members. It was a good exercise and I hope we can launch more reports as effectively as it was done this morning.
It was particularly appropriate given that the European craft has landed on the comet. We are very much with it today.
One of our Irish people, a Westmeath man, is involved in the joint promotion of that campaign. He is joint developer of the project.
The one that landed on the comet?
Yes.
Great.
Was he involved in putting out the legs that did not work?
No, he was not. He was over all that. He was joint director.
Someone said to me that if we were successful in landing what was little more than a washing machine on a comet moving at 4,000 mph four billion miles away, maybe one of the Irish forwards could stick a ball in the back of a net tomorrow night from 12 yards.
He is a rogue from Westmeath. He was educated in NUI, Maynooth and University College Cork. He got an excellent education in Ireland. As a result, he has achieved a first in the world, to land on a comet. It is a pretty exciting day and I thought the streaming of your speech today was also very much modern technology at work. Well done.
I thank everyone for taking part. It was a good team effort.
I apologise for the Minister not being present in that regard. She was in my constituency.
Which Minister was that?
The Minister for Education and Skills.
That is okay.
It went well. I understood it better than I understand whether they were going to give the diaspora a vote.
We will move into private session.
The joint committee went into private session at 2.11 p.m and resumed in public session at 2.18 p.m.