Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Regina Doherty The housing first approach is something we absolutely have to adopt. The Senator is right to say that, across the EU, Ireland is building far more houses than any other country. That is sometimes why it is difficult to hear foreign colleagues coming here and criticising us when their own record is not great, to be honest. I just wanted to acknowledge that. I would love to work on European sports policy, so maybe we should have more regular contact by email. I will take that on board. To answer Senator Clonan’s question, I do feel safe. I am particularly conscious of it flying back and forth. I spend more time on planes these days than I ever did in my whole life before. With regard to food security, something we could start doing here is supporting our tillage farmers and foodstuff manufacturers to ensure we have an Irish industry that can serve the Irish market. Currently, we do not have that. Our tillage farmers, for whom I am seeking a meeting with the Minister, will say they are being left behind. As the Senator suggested, we do not have horticulturists in the numbers we used to years ago. In a few years, we will have no tillage growers either. That is really worrying. I genuinely do not know whether there are thousands of soldiers waiting in the Russian wings to attack a European country. However, I do know the fear of very serious defence people in Poland and Finland. When they speak to us, I do not feel they are making it up. Their intelligence is based on the best information they have. Also, each of those countries has had a myriad and growing number of hybrid attacks that may be precursors to what they believe might be the worst-case eventuality. What I do know is that failure to prepare will definitely result in us not being ready. I hope to God an attack never happens, but if it does, solidarity and support for one another's countries has to be felt. I do not know where to begin and end with Senator Andrews' response, other than to say that my position on Palestine, from an Irish perspective, as an Irish MEP, is very clear. The work that I have done in the Parliament for the past two years has not always been welcomed by some of my EPP colleagues and that is fairly obvious. Like every party, including the Senator's - and it is an awful pity that his own party colleague is not here today to defend her voting record when she votes against Ireland on myriad cases - my grouping in the EU is a broad church. We do not all agree with each other but we do not all agree with each other around this table, collectively, either, and the point of what we try to do is to collectively work to get a consensus. Ireland has led that charge over the past two years. That was clear from the Commission President's speech last Wednesday. She said that it would have been far more preferable if the 12 or 13 European countries now supporting the Irish and Spanish position had done so a number of years ago. Had they done so, we might have actually got a much better outcome. All of us will continue to fight, as I am sure will all Senators, for the Palestinian people to make sure that they do get justice. I will keep doing my part. In response to Senator Harmon on AI and workers' rights, we have a quality jobs Act coming up in the employment affairs committee in the next number of months. A lot of it will be centred around people's rights as we currently know them. There is a huge opportunity for us to look forward into the future, even in terms of the ones that we already know will be displaced. First, we must make sure that there are jobs that can never be done by AI that have to have human interaction. We need to ensure that we have a programme of works to make sure that we can retrain people. Automated driving, for argument's sake, is something that we know about, as well as administrative works. What are we doing now to make sure that we retrain those people to the new jobs that have not even been created or developed yet? There has to be some sort of protection in law and that is a challenge for myself and Mr. Ó Riordáin in the next couple of months. Senator Noonan spoke about wildfires across Europe. Again, the President spoke this week about the challenge and the frustrations between industry and climate. Those challenges were laid bare and were clear to see during the summer which is why she is establishing the EU climate insurance pact to make sure that we work to more cooperatively together. I look forward to helping to progress that. In response to Senator Higgins, I appreciate her frustrations. She is a very passionate woman and she has been passionate on many topics over the years. The other side to the argument that she makes is the industrial accelerator Act. That is in stark contrast to the picture that she laid out, that we are actually putting money into the coffers of American companies. What we are desperately trying to do is to rebalance that competitive agenda, right back to European companies and manufacturers, to make sure that those people who have missed a boat to either China or America in the past five or ten years get supported by EU money to make sure that they are actually here to supply us, not just with food security but with tech security and job security as well. They cannot do that without a level playing field and the accelerator Act is going to do a lot on that in the next couple of months. --- 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