Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Mark Daly (CC), Administrative Panel Sorry for the delayed start. It is a great honour to welcome our colleagues from the European Parliament, Members of the European Parliament. I will announce them in alphabetical order. That is the way the seats have been allocated to make sure it is impartial. We are delighted they are here. We are joined by Ms Kathleen Funchion, MEP; Mr. Billy Kelleher, MEP; Mr. Seán Kelly, MEP; Mr. Michael McNamara, MEP and Ms Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, MEP, who are representing us in Europe, working together as a team. As the embodiment of that institution and our representatives there, it is very welcome, in this year of Ireland's forthcoming Presidency of the European Union, that they participate in this engagement with the Seanad. Standing Order 63(1) provides for Members of the European Parliament to be attendant and to be heard here with the approval of the Committee on Parliamentary Privileges and Oversight. I am delighted that so many Senators are here. We asked the Senators who are from the Ireland South constituency, similarly with Dublin and Midlands North West, to attend on the occasion of their MEPs being here. It is important. It is about strengthening the understanding within the Seanad and within Ireland generally about the work that our MEPs do in Brussels and Strasbourg. It is very complicated but very important in terms of agriculture, artificial intelligence, the issues around economic resilience, peace and security and also democratic values. We had a meeting yesterday of the Seanad Select Committee on EU Scrutiny and Transparency. Unfortunately, we did not get any one of the statutory instruments that we had sought. We hope to make sure that people understand the importance of the legislation that comes from Europe. When that legislation was coming from Europe in 1974 it accounted for 20 pieces of legislation. It is now over 200, so nearly four out of five of the laws that are enacted in Ireland in that process in our parliamentary system every year are European-led. The people of Ireland are entitled to see the drafts before they are signed into law and our legislators are entitled to see them in advance. This co-operation between the Seanad and our MEPs is greatly valued. I will outline how we will run this session. Some of the MEPs have been here before. Each MEP will address the Chamber for six minutes. There will be contributions - and I mean questions; it is about questions - by the spokespersons in each group, and then a response not exceeding three minutes from the MEPs. We will then have questions from Senators. There will then be final contributions. It is all very short, at two hours, but it is valued that the MEPs are here. I will, in alphabetical order, call on Ms Kathleen Funchion, MEP. You are most welcome. --- 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/seanad/2026-02-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-18