Europe Day: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown He sometimes cuts it fine, so I hope he will be here shortly. I welcome the opportunity to make these statements to celebrate Europe Day because I am a proud European. It is important to remember and celebrate the very positive influence European Union membership had has on Irish society, as did, prior to European Union membership, co-operation with European member states post war and post conflict. I want to emphasise first that this is for me a really heartbreaking moment, whereby what started as a peace project in post-war Europe - the European Union was called something different then - to end and prevent conflict between European nations and to prevent wider global conflict is at a point where we are now approaching essentially a European defence union and the level of militarisation in the European Union - the Minister of State shakes his head at me and at other speakers----- --- 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/2026-05-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-07