Post-European Council Meeting: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08 ============================================================ Neale Richmond (FG), Dublin Rathdown I thank all the Deputies for their contributions to this important regular debate, particularly those who have placed very pertinent questions that I will try to answer as thoroughly possible in the time available to me. I will start with the issue of Irish unity and how Europe relates to that as raised in questions by Deputies Ó Laoghaire, Ó Murchú and Gould and, indeed, in their party leader's opening intervention. One thing that is important when we talk about the constitutional future of our nation is how Europe fits into that. Referred to by their party leader, but without much detail, was the agreement by the European Council, which was the first European Council subsequent to the fateful Brexit referendum that Deputy O'Donoghue spoke about in some detail. The fact is it was former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, who secured the absolute acceptance from the European Council that when or if - I hope it is when - our nation is reunited, it will automatically be a united state within the European Union. There is no question there. That is quite simple. If we go on the journey, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland calls a border poll and we have ratification of a united Ireland North and South, that will be an Ireland part of the European Union. That is it. That is the first and most important thing. That is a case that is raised repeatedly with me by people from the North who say, "We did not vote for Brexit. We certainly did not vote to lose our European citizenship". Thankfully, most of them have Irish passports and they are able to retain their European citizenship, but they are no longer in the EU jurisdiction. That is the first and last discussion when it comes to Europe. There were a couple of subsequent things raised by Deputy Gould that are worth reflecting on. We talk about European funding. Europe is not going to pay for unity. We have to be quite clear about the status of the economy at this point, for example, of the Republic. At this stage, we are a net contributor to the European Union. Even based on the current economic forecasts and the status of the North in terms of employment, we would still be a net contributor as a united Ireland. That is a mark of something we should be proud of. We spent so long - decades - receiving huge amounts of structural and cohesion funding because when we joined the European Economic Community we were, in many arguments, what was then known as a Third World country. We are not like that, certainly not in this jurisdiction. When we take any European mapping pre-Brexit and post Brexit, the part of this island that is, perhaps, in need of the biggest focus of co-ordinated support would be the Border region. Deputy Ó Murchú has raised this very eloquently. That is why it is about the importance of retaining programmes, such as PEACEPLUS, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in Iveagh House ten days ago, receiving over €1 billion in European funding to drive projects North and South that deliver real levels of community building, reconciliation and some sort of move away from the societal and economic harm that years of conflict led to on this island. I take the point made more widely. Regarding the Scottish referendum, the two issues that really focused that was what Scotland's status would be. We saw the former President of the European Commission, José Barroso, pour cold water in that there was no guarantee that Scotland would automatically be part of the European Union. They could not decide among themselves in the "Yes" campaign whether they would have a new form of sterling or a currency pegged to sterling or adopt the euro. That is not an issue for us. We join the European Union and we join the euro. It is simple as. The Deputy said that is not an issue for us to decide, but they are the rules and those are the rules that are in our interests as well as our responsibility. Moving more broadly into the areas raised by Deputes Ó Laoghaire and Gibney into Aughinish Alumina relating to the status quo and where we are, I recognise the vote in the European Parliament. It was not just Fine Gael's political grouping. It was all four of our MEPs who voted in that direction. Again, I cannot speak for my coalition partners but I will invite them to, perhaps, take the Deputy up on her kind offer. Regarding the status quo from a Government point of view, we have a twentieth sanctions package. We have supported every single one of the sanction packages where alumina is not listed. We are moving towards a twenty-first package. It must be noted that the independent accreditation audit, for want of a better word, by former Secretary-General of the European Commission, David O'Sullivan, has consistently stated that Ireland is one of the top countries for implementing the sanctions. Alumina is not a sanctioned material. That is simply a statement of fact. It may be in a twenty-first package of negotiations. More pertinently to the Deputy's questions, very real charges have been placed in The Irish Times and by other investigative journalists stating that the amounts of alumina being produced from Aughinish are going indirectly to the Russian war machine. If that is the case, it is completely unacceptable. There is currently a Government investigation being led by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. Deputy Ó Laoghaire asked about what sort of conversations are happening with the Commission. Any sort of investigation requires a member state government to maintain regular contact with the Commission in terms of the status of the investigation. This is not a straightforward investigation. We have already seen the reporting that the CSO figures have been withdrawn and there are complications there. We see months of investigative journalists' work leading to, perhaps, areas of the supply chain. When the investigation is produced, the Government is open to all suggestions and working with the European Commission to a future, bearing in mind the very real economic impact and the importance of jobs in the region, but also our very clear obligations to ensure that we have no complicity in the Russian war machine and its campaign of terror on the Ukrainian people. To go back to Deputy Gould's points in relation to the Coady family and access to medicines, it is a harrowing case. My heart goes out to the entire family. Of course, we know that when medicines go to the European Medicines Agency, they then have to be verified on a domestic level as well. Part of the subsidiarity mechanism is making sure that it is fit for purpose, such as a medicine or treatment that may be in available in other EU members states that is not yet perhaps available here in Ireland. We have all heard about and had constituents who had to travel to the Netherlands or Germany to receive treatments, for example, with new cancer drugs or whatever may be the case. However, as that is of little comfort to the Coady family, what I can commit to is that I will engage directly with the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, and see through her offices what the status is with the domestic regulation and implementation of this drug, bearing in mind the need to do this as quickly as possible given the situation facing the Coady family. --- 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/dail/2026-07-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-08