European Union
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07
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Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire

I agree with the Minister of State on the effort being made. I acknowledge the work done by the Department of foreign affairs and European Movement Ireland. I also acknowledge that Noelle O'Connell has left as the head of European Movement and has been replaced by David Geary. We wish him the best of luck there. They do a particularly good job in terms of advertising jobs and making people aware. While I acknowledge that there has been success there, many of our highly qualified capable graduates are not aware of the opportunities that arise. It is not just the Commission and the Parliament. There are many institutions across the European Union where there are good quality jobs that give people an opportunity to contribute at the highest level but also give us an opportunity as a country to put our values and our views at the top table. We need to be encouraging those people, and however good it might be now, we need to redouble our efforts.
There is an opportunity coming with the Presidency. I know from speaking to colleagues around Europe that there is a very high expectation for how Ireland will do during that Presidency. We all have faith that our officials will continue to deliver at the highest level, as they have done in the past and as they will do again in the second half of this year. However, there is an opportunity now for us to target graduates from university, people within the jobs market. I am not talking about it happening passively but we need to be doing it actively. There should be a dedicated unit within the Department of foreign affairs that has, as its remit, education, information and assistance to help people get into those positions, and doing so in a targeted way with measurables so they can show the increases in numbers of applications and the successes that might come from those applications. If we do not do this, we will allow our numbers to reduce in real terms and our influence within the Union to reduce.
It is to be hoped during our Presidency that we will pursue an enlargement agenda which will make the European Union larger. I know that Montenegro might be at the top of the list, but there are countries very close behind it as well. In the coming years, we will see enlargement. A lot of their citizens will have to fill positions. We cannot allow Ireland to fall behind into a position where our guys are not getting a seat at the table the way they should.

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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