European Union Dail Éireann — 2024-03-07 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central I am not into the demonisation of individuals. I would say, on the credit side, that President von der Leyen was impactful in respect of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was very well handled by the European Commission and nobody can deny that. When I was Minister for Health in the early 2000s, Europe was at nowhere near that level of cohesion, as Deputy Howlin would agree, in terms of getting industry together and getting Europe together to have one vaccine production system of which everybody could avail. That was an enormous achievement. There has also been great unity in respect of the war in Ukraine. The Deputy might volunteer at some stage, because I do not know, whether Sinn Féin will be in the same grouping or a different grouping in the next European Parliament. What nominee will it be supporting? --- 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/2024-03-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-03-07