Europe Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel We have heard a lot of callbacks to John Hume. He was a proud European social democrat and talked about the European project being the greatest peace project, which it was, along with the Council of Europe, in the post-war period. I am happy to hear about European Movement Ireland's positive figures. I think the Minister of State said close to nine out of ten people on the island of Ireland support Ireland's membership of the EU and see the positive things that come out of it. However, the failure of the European Union to act in any collective way in light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the apartheid state in the West Bank has put serious question marks over the European Union's commitment to international law and human rights for everybody and its ability to deal with issues of peacebuilding beyond its borders. It feels like a real black mark that it has not been willing to take action. Ireland has made interventions and Spain has been one of the really strong voices but across the board we have not been willing as European Union member states to take collective action. Europe Day is a good time to reflect on one of the most successful peace projects in history. The Schuman Declaration was declared for peace, integration and co-operation, announcing that economic co-operation and dependence are the glue that binds us and keeps us from descending into war. Shortly after this, the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, was signed, laying out the inviolable human rights no European state was permitted to breach. The EU was founded on the values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and respect for human rights. Today, these absolute and fundamental rights instead of being non-negotiable and a baseline for informing EU policymaking appear to have become optional. I note the Minister of State spoke about the protection of fundamental rights and how important that is. I welcome those comments. However, we have seen actions waver in Ireland with regard to the concepts of fundamental human rights and protections. Ireland has historically been a champion of the universality of human rights, but in the past few months we saw a worrying and insidious shift away from that. I reference Ireland's willingness to deviate from its commitment to the concept of the universality of human rights when the Minister for justice signed Ireland up to the political declaration to effectively revise standards on non-conditional rights under Article 3 of the ECHR. That Article relates to degrading and inhumane treatment and torture. That we would seek to revise those standards sets a deeply problematic precedent from this Government. I have tried on two separate occasions to put this question to the Minister for foreign affairs during Commencement matters and to hear directly from the Department about Ireland's position in relation to the ECHR. Unfortunately, the Minister was not able to come to the Chamber either time. I had hoped to have the opportunity today to raise it with the Department. This is no reflection on the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer. We are grateful that he has systematically come for things outside his brief. I respect that he spent two terms in the Seanad and understands how important it is for us, but it is disappointing not to have had that chance to day. Ireland is seeking to take a seat on the UN Human Rights Council later this year, while at the same time exploring ways to lower principles on universal standards of human rights when it comes to degrading treatment and torture. That is obscene and ridiculous. I wonder why Ireland is seeking to chip away at the strong and coherent systems we have on human rights at a time when human rights and multilateralism are being eroded. We constantly hear rhetoric from this Government about how international law is so important and crucial, yet the actions we are seeing undermine the frameworks of those human rights standards. Signing up to attempts to remove the concept of universality of human rights is a horrifying trend. We have the opportunity with the EU Presidency to make our commitments to international law and human rights the focus of the EU's agenda at a time when that is slipping. Will the Department commit to that today? I have only heard vague references to values on the agenda for the Presidency. I have not specifically heard about international law and human rights. Values can be open to interpretation. We have seen a clear shift in EU policymaking. Competitiveness is the phrase of the day. It is being operationalised to narrow corporate obligations on human rights and the environment with weaker accountability mechanisms. For Ireland's Presidency, the Government has chosen to use the language of competitiveness in its aims and ambitions which is a synonym for deregulation in Europe. We have seen human rights and environmental protections framed as obstacles in Europe to be overcome and framed as inefficiencies and red tape. However, regulation is there to protect people and the planet. I think the Minister of State said we are Europe and the institutions protect us. I 100% agree with that sentiment but then why are we trying to strip back the regulations in place to protect us as Europeans, and to protect the institutions and the planet? Regulations are there to ensure rights are non-negotiable. I am disappointed the Government is parroting the Commission's language on competitiveness. It always makes me wonder - who are we competing against? Is it a race to the bottom on human rights and environmental standards with China? Is that our aim? We heard from other Senators about the importance of holding third countries like China to account for their human rights standards. Who are we competing against? What is the competitiveness for? What standards are we hoping to lower to make ourselves more competitive and with whom? I hope it is not China. That is not a race I want us to participate in when we know about the labour abuses and exploitation in China. We heard from the Taoiseach in Washington DC this year that the Government is committed to innovation over regulation, a statement he made a few short weeks after we were all reeling from the Grok deepfake scandal. The EU's upcoming omnibus packages will see digital protections further weakened. We need a commitment from this Government to use the EU Presidency as a time to halt this process. We heard from the Minister of State responsible for AI a few months ago in the Chamber that she is not interested in halting this process. This will make protections for children online worse. That is what the digital omnibus will do. It will strip back hard-won rights and make us all less safe online. Given everything that has happened with Grok, I cannot believe we will support this. I was similarly appalled by the vote on the Omnibus I package last November on removing hard-won rights under the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. It was effectively completely torn up. The omnibus was voted through. Notably, for the first time in history, the EPP, of which Fine Gael MEPs are members, voted with the far right, a commitment which has historically been a red line for the European Parliament. It is very disappointing. I would like to know what the Government is going to do, if anything, during the Presidency to slow down the tide of the nine more omnibus packages coming down the line from the Commission. These omnibus packages, let there be no doubt, are about reducing hard-won regulations to protect European citizens. In recent years in Brussels, new channels have been put in place that privilege corporate access to EU policymaking and the icing out of civil society from any meaningful participation. This is a bad shift particularly when healthy civil society engagement is a core pillar of a well-functioning democracy. It is a pillar of good democracy. In our overseas aid work, we expect third countries we work with to have good civil society engagement and dialogue with their policymakers, yet we see that being weakened in Europe. What is Ireland going to do under the EU Presidency to uphold the role of civil society within this context? Corporate influence is being formalised, civil society engagement is being sidelined and we are seeing a slash-and-burn approach to human rights regulations originally designed to protect us as citizens. Disappointingly, the concerns I have outlined are not remotely reflected in the Government analysis of where we stand with Europe. The Minister of State spoke about Europe never being more tested and never being more necessary. I agree. I am a proud European but the challenge in Europe now is that so many hard-won gains are being removed with little democratic process. We heard from other Senators about all of the good things Europe has brought us. That includes safety standards around chemicals, financial security processes, human rights and protections on the environment - all transformative for who we are as citizens in Europe. Irish citizens and every other European citizen have received those benefits. The current trajectory coming from the Commission is deregulation, slash and burn and removing those hard-won rights. When we say that we are Europe, we should be horrified by that. This is a genuinely worrying trend. When we consider future generations, what it means to be European and all the good things about Europe, we note that the current trajectory and trend of the Commission are at odds with them. They are at odds with the values of human rights, the rule of law and democracy. I have been particularly concerned about how civil society metrics across many member states are declining. The engagement of civil society is declining and, as I have said before, that engagement is a core pillar of a well-functioning, healthy democracy. We need to explore how we can champion it going forward. --- 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