Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Aodhán Ó Ríordáin I will do my absolute best to respond to Senators. I thank them for their warm comments, which are genuinely appreciated. Housing was mentioned by a number who asked what we have done. We have changed the state aid rules so that individual local authorities now have a greater capacity to borrow. When I met the CEO of Dublin City Council last year, he said that the collective borrowing capacity of the 31 local authorities in Ireland is €118 million. That is it. That is all they could borrow in the morning if they collectively went to try to access funding. When we changed state aid rules, that facilitated local authorities to get more involved in borrowing for housing if they want to. In addition, in terms of short-term lets, they do not need to be worried about EU competition law any more when trying to reduce or curtail the amount of properties that are let out through Airbnb or similar. We had a very passionate contribution from Senator Ní Chuilinn on TikTok, which is very much appreciated. What is bizarre is that when one is in the European Parliament, one cannot access one's TikTok account because it is actually perceived to be so dangerous but yet we allow children to access it anywhere in the European Union. We need to start considering banning or curtailing platforms before we start considering banning or curtailing children. The emphasis, as Mr. Andrews MEP rightly said, needs to be put back on the companies, corporations and platforms and not on the families or the children, necessarily. Gaza has been mentioned today and I have spoken about the Israel agreement previously. Similar to militarisation or security, although one does not have to agree - and I do not necessarily agree - one has to appreciate or have a sense or a feeling for where the average German or Austrian MEP is coming from. They have a Holocaust hangover. I do not want to put it in comical terms but that is exactly what they are trying to atone for in their politics. They know what their grandfathers and their great grandfathers did and in supporting Israel, they feel they are atoning for that. It is misguided, wrong and it is hurting Palestinian children. It is killing Palestinian children but that is, unfortunately, what we are trying to change, On security, the security discussion in Ireland is similar to the abortion discussion. Irish society liked exceptionalism when it came to abortion, as long as we were able to allow 4,000 women a year to go to the UK. We also like our exceptionalism when it comes to security, as long as somebody else will guide and protect us. That is not the kind of attitude that a serious, European, modern nation should take. We should be an awful lot more understanding of those who do have concerns when it comes to bordering Russia and what they may be engaging with. In terms of sport and gender equality in sport, I appreciate the Senator's leadership on this. I have an eight-year-old girl and she has to choose between soccer and GAA on a Sunday. The eight-year-old boy who lives beside me does not have to make that choice. She is eight. That is something that we must have a proper discussion about. How does gender equality genuinely work its way into every facet of Irish society when those who are trying to access support have those barriers in front of them? There are about 200 far-right MEPs in the European Parliament and they are being pandered to on climate change, immigration, and violence against women. They will tell us that immigration is the issue when it comes to violence against women. They will tell us that housing is an immigration problem and they are climate change deniers. They used to be on the outskirts. There was a cordon sanitaire, whereby others did not vote for any amendment they put down or engage with them on any level but unfortunately, that centre ground of pro-European politics is under strain more than ever before and Ms Ursula von der Leyen has a lot to answer for when it comes to that. We have seen in European elections in different member states how the far right is gaining traction. That is because other centre right parties have taken on their clothing and normalised their politics. On drugs and injecting facilities, which was raised by Senator Harmon, the facility in Dublin has been a huge success but the legislation needs to be amended to facilitate not just injection but consumption. If one goes to the injecting facility in Brussels, 90% of the people using it are actually smoking crack cocaine rather than injecting heroin. We need to be much more agile and reflective of the needs of the individual drug user. That mainstream, European knowledge and experience of drug policy or things like drug policy would really benefit us in Ireland. We need decriminalisation of drug users but also a consumption facility in other urban centres. On the issue of farming and the LIFE project that needs funding to support 44,000 part-time farmers, some farming organisations are not properly representing those who engage in agriculture in Ireland. Sometimes their influence is too much and the nitrates derogation and the extension of it was a wrong turn for Ireland. --- 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