Europe Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Joe O'Reilly (FG), Labour Panel I welcome our distinguished alumnus from the Seanad here, the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, who we thought very well of. He is one our best products and doing extremely well in his Ministry. I am delighted to welcome him back and we are proud of his achievements. I will start by reiterating for a moment the obvious benefits of the EU. I happen to be of the vintage that lived before and after our membership - for a short part of my life I hasten to add, but it was before we joined. In terms of physical infrastructure, the country is unrecognisable with our roads, motorways and technological universities. Our physical, educational and medical infrastructure was supported by structural funding and cohesion funding. You have a transformed physical landscape because of Europe. There is a transformed trading landscape by virtue of the Single Market and access to 500 million people. There is free movement of goods and people, etc. That is transformative for the economy and the lives of people. We have had a transformed social landscape to the extent that rights have been bestowed on people by virtue of our membership of Europe and rulings of the European Court of Justice, ECJ, the social pressure of Europe and our general participation. It has greatly enhanced women's rights. Paddy Hillery, an Irish Commissioner, as social affairs Commissioner brought in a proposition on equal pay for equal work. Women's rights were transformed. The rights of people of all sexual orientations were transformed and put on an equal footing by Europe through rulings of the court of justice and the political assembly. It is transformative socially, economically and physically. On Europe Day we might need to talk of the current challenges. I should have mentioned that I want to give four minutes of my time to Senator Lynch. That takes me to six minutes. --- 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/2026-05-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-07