Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Eileen Lynch (FG), Agricultural Panel It is very important that the MEPs are here with us today. We often see or feel that there is a disconnect between our representatives in Europe and our representatives and people here. How do the MEPs feel we can bridge the gap not so much with our politicians but with our people because our connection and our place in Europe have never been more important than now? We are seeing a massive fragmentation of the Union and of parties within the Union but also of politics at a global level. When we have a fragmented and a weakened democracy, it weakens us economically and makes us more vulnerable to other markets. How do we address that deficit? How do we protect our democracy and the rule of law because this is something that the Union stands for and it is something we definitely are not doing enough for at the moment? As democracy and values are very important and will probably play a large role in our Presidency, how do we deal with that? Second, I would like to speak about the multi-annual financial framework, MFF. During our last EU Council Presidency, we worked to deliver the final MFF and I would be optimistic that that would happen during our Council Presidency this year. In particular, I would like to speak about CAP reform, which has already been touched on by several of the MEPs. Obviously, it is incredibly disappointing that we have seen a decrease in our CAP budget and a change in the way in which CAP functions. We have seen the removal of the two-pillar system. Do the MEPs believe there is any scope for this to change? When we look at the national and regional partnership plan, NRPP, and CAP coming from within that, all of our local development companies and groups that receive LEADER funding are very concerned. Will groups be fighting for this funding for Ireland? Our NRPP budget at the moment is somewhere in the region of €12 billion with €8 billion allocated to agriculture and €4 billion allocated to the remaining supports. Is there scope there? I think Billy Kelleher mentioned that. The only way that I see, and it has been commented on by Commissioner Serafin, to increase our budget is if we have a larger input from member states and if they desire to do that because it is disappointing to see such a decrease in our CAP budget, in particular for our young farmers. We are not talking enough about generational renewal. We talk about security and defence and we have a massively increased security and defence budget but what about our food security and encouraging our young farmers? I appreciate it is within CAP and that our own Government has published a report on it but what are we going to do on a practical level to ensure food security and to ensure generational renewal within our agricultural sector? There is a lot of talk at the moment about the savings and investment union. How do we deepen the Single Market and how do we improve regulatory simplification and take burdens off businesses to allow them to flourish? --- 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