Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Aodhán Ó Ríordáin As my colleagues said, it is a genuine honour to be here to share our work in the European Parliament with Senators and to be back in the Oireachtas. I ran for the European Parliament inspired in some way because of the racist riot that took place in November 2023 on the streets of Dublin. I was extremely worried about the rise of the far right and convinced that the prioritisation of Dublin in the political sphere was not being taken seriously enough. On my first day in the European Parliament, I told my colleagues that I had three priorities; housing, housing and housing. As Ms Doherty quite rightly said, we have a housing committee and a housing Commissioner. We now have a housing report and our first European housing legislation. I hope that in the budget negotiations that will be finalised by the end of the year, we may have some financial assistance for housing. Having 4,000 children living in my city in emergency accommodation is an outrage and there is also the fact that tourists are living in homes while children are living in hotels. That is why there was such an emphasis in the Affordable Housing Act 2021 on regulation of short-term lets. Some of the campaigning I have done in Dublin throughout my political life I have brought to the European Parliament. I have established a new informal committee on drugs and drug use, which has tried to bring some of the mainstream European talk when it comes to decriminalisation of the drug user, and the facilitation of injecting facilities and consumption rooms, to the mainstream of Irish politics. We also had a petition which we brought to the European Parliament from parents who are waiting for assessments of needs for their children. I am on the UK-EU delegation, which means that we have an interaction with Westminster politicians every six months or so. I am a member of the S&D, which is the second biggest group in the European Parliament. We obviously have a political relationship with the British Labour Party and on that basis, I am encouraging my British Labour Party colleagues to take Northern Ireland much more seriously. Also, all of us are working collaboratively as Irish MEPs to ensure the recognition of Irish passport holders born in the North of Ireland. They are EU citizens and they deserve to have EU representation as well. Simplification and competitiveness have been mentioned. As somebody of the left, we understand the importance of these two words but at the same time we are nervous about rowing back on the very things that have protected consumers and workers' rights over generations. When I was a young man, I became very aware that my mother had to leave the Civil Service when she got married. It is only because of our membership of the European Union that advances in workers' rights and gender equality have improved things. However, there is a body of far-right MEPs who are determined to row back all of that. It is important for all of us in the centre ground to co-operate with each other and not to allow anti-European and extreme voices to take over. Ukraine and Gaza have been mentioned and they are extremely important. Sometimes we forget, as Ms Doherty quite rightly said, and think that Ukraine is something that happens on television, but it is not something that happens on television for those who live in a member state that borders Russia. It is a very real threat to their way of life. They have a memory within their families of Russian aggression. That is why, for me, solidarity with Ukraine and understanding the necessity of member states to react to what is happening is important. The issue of Gaza is also forefront in our minds. It destabilises the European Union to have an association agreement with a country like Israel, which flouts international law so readily. The EU-Israel Association Agreement is worth €45 billion. It would have much more effect on changing Israel's course of action when it comes to Gaza, the West Bank or other areas where it shows aggression, if we were to genuinely threaten the suspension or the ending of that trade agreement. Coming back to housing, there is commitment from Government. We had the Minister for housing in Strasbourg last week. There is a commitment for a meeting of the housing ministers in November, with a focus on homelessness, which I look forward to engaging with. There is a commitment for a housing summit, which Ursula von der Leyen made in her state of the union speech last year. We are still waiting for details on that. If there were to be a housing summit in Dublin - I would hope before the end of the year with the main players of the European Union - it would bring more energy to the discussion of housing our people. If there is any momentum behind anti-European sentiment and behind those who wish to break up what has been the greatest peace process in history, it is because Europe does not seem to be reacting strongly enough to the needs of people on the ground. If people cannot house themselves, their families or their children then politics feels very distant from them. I hope we get to a position to be able to deliver on that housing summit before the end of the year. In her state of the Union address last week Ursula von der Leyen said a lot of things. She spoke about AI, which is something we are concerned about on the employment committee in the context of labour displacement. She also spoke about housing being a right. Many people in the European Parliament believe property is a right but we are trying to move to a situation where housing is recognised as a right so we can, as I said, house our children and especially those who currently live in emergency accommodation. --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23