Europe Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Martin Conway (IND), Administrative Panel I take this opportunity to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, who was here earlier. I listened to his contribution. He is a person I admire because he has moral courage and speaks out. I have been following him over the past 12 months, and he does speak out on important issues. That is something wanted to put on the record. When people voted to retain the Seanad in 2013, one of the key selling points was that we would have a greater role in scrutinising EU directives. On foot of his dogged determination a few years ago, the Cathaoirleach ensured that the EU scrutiny committee approved by Cabinet and established. I was very honoured to chair that committee during the lifetime of the previous Oireachtas. The Cathaoirleach is continuing that good work in terms of chairing of the EU scrutiny committee now. He and Senator Higgins will recall that some Departments were very co-operative and that others were not so co-operative. The objective was that all Departments would be co-operative and that we would conduct scrutiny. Some directives were technical in nature and would not necessarily need to be scrutinised, but others needed significant scrutiny by the sectoral committees. Essentially, that is the job; it is a kind of signposting exercise. It is like air traffic control to a large extent in that measures are sent to the committee for scrutiny. The aim was that all directives would be dealt with and transposed before we took over the EU Presidency. Let us see if that happens; I sincerely hope it does. The role the Seanad has in terms of bridging the democratic deficit between Europe and the Irish people is significant and should really be utilised an awful lot more. It is great that MEPs come in here and they are always very welcome. That engagement started in the last Seanad and has developed into something very useful. I sincerely hope the scrutiny committee goes from strength to strength. Our Presidency of the European Union, which begins on 1 July next, will be crucial. It represents a huge opportunity for Ireland to make a statement on certain issues. In my capacity as chair of the committee of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on political involvement of persons with disabilities, which is made up of experts from various OSCE countries, I addressed the European Parliament on persons with disabilities in 2024. There was great optimism at that time that we were on the cusp of something significant Europe-wide in terms of equality of persons with disabilities in employment, transport, independent living and so on. Unfortunately, that has not materialised to the degree that it should have or with the speed that we would have hoped. People might be quite taken aback to know that Ireland is one of the better performers when it comes to the categories to which I refer, but not when it comes to employment. Unfortunately, we are still dealing with 80%-plus of people with disabilities requiring some sort of State supports, which is not really acceptable. The political participation of people with disabilities, a matter in respect of which my expert panel is tasked with coming up with processes, recommendations and so on, is even worse. We had a meeting of the expert panel in the Houses of the Oireachtas in November 2024, when people came from all over the OSCE countries. We produced the Dublin declaration, a set of recommendations on increasing the political participation of persons with disabilities. However, the level of participation is way below 1%. Only 0.02% of parliamentarians in Europe, whether they are in the European Parliament or in national parliaments, are person with disabilities. In most parliaments, there are none. In this Parliament, there are two with declared disabilities, which is wonderful. In others, there are none. There is a huge job of work to do to create an environment where 10% of the population feel that there are people who identify with them are representing them in various parliaments. I sincerely hope that one of the priorities we embrace will be to create the type of environment that will allow persons with disabilities throughout Europe to feel they can participate in the political process. Our Presidency can be a cockpit for driving that type of initiative. It would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to our colleague Senator Joe O'Reilly, who is the longest-serving member of the Assembly of the Council of Europe, for the great work he has done over decades in terms of engaging on behalf of both our country and Europe on very important issues. I wish him well in his endeavours in that role 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