Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Paraic Brady (FG), Agricultural Panel

The MEPs are very welcome. As a small rural farmer from north Longford, I totally agree with the sentiments Mr. Mullooly expressed earlier. We have to protect the farming community at all costs. Food security has to be number one when it comes to the next CAP. That is certain. The responsibility for defining an "active farmer" should continue to rest with the member state and, therefore, it should continue to rest with Ireland. We should define "active farmer" ourselves. I would not like us to lose that. We have a lot of people who are not actively farming but are still in receipt of huge CAP payments. We must target supports for active and productive farming.
I want to ask all our MEPs about the safeguards. Some of them voted against the safeguards and others voted for them. Could they clarify why they voted against the safeguards? Any safeguard that protects Irish farming is something that every farmer needs to know about.
I would like to clarify one issue regarding school meals. We have huge businesses in Longford, as Senator Flaherty said. I have visited these businesses and know at first hand that the meat that goes into our school meals comes from local produce. Local farmers are delivering into local abattoirs that are supplying these businesses. I ask Mr. Mullooly to withdraw what he said in this House. He worked in RTÉ but has not clarified the statements he made in the European Parliament to the effect that there were tanks on the streets of Dublin during a peaceful protest. I ask him to withdraw that statement. That was very damaging to this country on a world stage. My brother in America rang and asked me what the hell was going on that there were tanks on the streets of Dublin. As Trump said in America, false information can be damaging at all times. Mr. Mullooly knows that was false. I ask him to withdraw his comments in this House today. I ask him to get up and confirm it was false information. People need to see the smoke from the trees.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27