Europe Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland In a way, the previous speaker has said everything and covered the matter in great detail. I hope that, with Ireland's Presidency this year, we will have real, detailed discussions that go past the simplified frames we sometimes hear about, such as the one about us all being proud Europeans. We are all proud Europeans and Ireland is proudly European, as citizen polls show. What needs to be considered, however, is that a majority of those citizens who support Europe and want to be part of it believe it is moving in the wrong direction and a third believe it is not upholding its core values. Some of the hardest information you get comes from those who really care about you, including your friends. In this regard, the citizens of Ireland who are supportive of the EU are sending a really clear signal that needs to be listened to, namely, that they are very worried about the direction of travel and the question of core values being upheld. On the circumstances of Ireland going into this Presidency, it is not like in other countries, where they have to communicate why they should be part of the EU. There is no public communications issue here; rather, there is a genuine message that needs to be brought back into the European institutions and leadership by Ireland needs to be provided to help Europe to correct its direction and rediscover and reassert its core values. I was very proud to have been part of the Future of Europe process. That process was almost a moment when we felt we had had a curve of learning. We had a decade of austerity and many of its major architects have admitted it was wrong. Individual members of the troika have come out and said there were mistakes made. We came almost as close as you could get to mea culpas . When we hear about competitiveness, the framing is important. Europe has not been losing its comparative advantage because of its regulations. It has been losing out because the ten-year vision we had for smart, sustainable, inclusive growth was put aside in favour of short-term quarterly fiscal targets. We lost a decade of public investment in the green transformation, digital progress and our own digital technologies. The rest of the world, which responded to the recession by increasing investment, got a head start at that point. Regulation was not the problem. It was stepping back from public engagement and public investment that created the gap. The actual comparative advantage is that the EU, with its very large market, creates standards that companies in it are meeting and can meet. Right now, Europe has the comparative advantage of having policies, regulations and standards that reflect the reality of the existence of climate change and of living in a diverse world. We are looking to others who are, frankly, setting fire to their scientific and economic progress because they are trying to harken back to a fantasy version of the 1950s. They are literally trying to remove some of the advantages rather than lean into these areas. These are our strengths on a practical level. I was one of four parliamentarians from Ireland in the Future of Europe process. Eight hundred citizens from right across Europe, including Ireland, came together for many months and, in outlining what they valued about Europe, made it clear time and again that they valued exactly what Senators across this House have spoken about, namely, gender equality, workers' rights, environmental standards and health and safety protections. These are the facets that made them proud to be European. Citizens from across Europe were willing to give up time and travel to Strasbourg on multiple occasions to talk about the future of Europe because they were proud of what Europe had done regarding rights and standards. Right now, we have a European Commission that is not only making very poor choices for the future but also effectively is setting fire to the past. There are nine omnibus Bills, each one of which removes an entire set of protections and standards that have been hard won. On the due diligence directive, I went back and forth for years with the current Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, developing the idea that supply chains of the very largest companies would have basic accountability and would not involve the likes of child labour and slavery. The corporate sustainability reporting directive was about the very largest companies acting on climate change. These measures got gutted in a three-month process through an omnibus Bill. Now we have the digital omnibus, which will dilute our GDPR protections. There are seven or eight more omnibus Bills, targeting every area from the environment to, potentially, workers' rights. We are at a moment where we are at risk not just of travelling in the wrong direction but also of digging up the road that got Europe to the point it is at now. I have very specific questions. Time and again, specific questions will arise. During its Presidency, Ireland will have the chance to do some very meaningful things such as, for example, standing up for the LIFE programme, which relates to the climate and biodiversity. This is the programme that supports farmers right across the country, who are trying to do the right thing on climate change. The aim is to have the funding ring-fenced rather than absorbed into a competitiveness fund where it is competing against drones and everything else. There is going to be debate on the digital omnibus. Will we actually be standing up for greater protections or will we be contributing to the dilution? Questions on workers' rights are going to be considered during the period of the Presidency, including in respect of the pay transparency directive, which Ireland has one month to transpose and that still has not really been properly transposed, as far as I can see. The EU scrutiny committee, which was mentioned by the Cathaoirleach, will have a role. That is a committee that the Seanad has formed with a view to giving a sense of accountability in relation to EU legislation that is coming through. We do not want it to be a kind of accountability wash. Talking about that committee's work needs to be matched by genuine engagement by Departments and genuine, timely engagement on the statutory instruments. Values have been mentioned as key. If values are going to be a theme, international law needs to be included. We hear the phrase "values and interests". I feel like I am hearing it more often. It almost suggests we will talk about values and then have a chat about interests. I emphasise that while interests are important, they need to sit within values. If we are serious about values, then they should obtain and we should pursue our interests within the frame of those values. We cannot balance one off against the other. Our colleagues in Europe need to engage in a very difficult, serious and challenging discussion on international law. I would like to hear some comment on that matter. Ireland should consider international law, Europe's role in that regard and the need for seriousness in respect of it. In the case of Ireland, that means passing the occupied territories Bill. We are crystal clear about the obligation on all states to prevent trade or investment relations that contribute to the maintenance of the illegal situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. That is what the International Court of Justice has told us. Will what is needed in this regard include the blocking mechanism that Spain has called for to protect the justices of the International Criminal Court who have been targeted by the US and cut off by Microsoft? Will Ireland take leadership in relation to international law as opposed to paying lip service to it? Will we be challenging countries, including large partners such as Germany, that are standing in the way of international law at this time? I would like to ask explicitly if there will be a focus on international law under the values theme as part of the Presidency. --- 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