Ms Maria Walsh:

Of course. Senator Gallagher and the Chair spoke about speak about EU scrutiny and I welcome the points made. We can certainly work together on that, as it is a fitting space. We have a very important role to play in homing in on solidarity.

Senator Gallagher asked how we can get people to engage with the European Parliament and the EU institutions as a whole. I have been scratching my head about that since I ran for office in 2019. As a person new to politics, when I meet citizens I am consistently asked what happens in the European Parliament, what does an MEP do and how can people engage with the EU, other than seeing the symbol on buildings and roadsides. There has to be some education on this.

Without attaching too much weight to the Conference on the Future of Europe, it can really help us, as Irish citizens, to take an all-island approach to talking about what the EU has given us, what we want to see being learned from it, what each institution does and develops for us and to connect those who feel most disconnected from the EU overall.

A great deal of what happens in the institutions has an impact. The impacts may not be immediate because it can take from three to five years for proposals to be enacted. Many great things happen here but the media is not picking up on them or we are not communicating effectively across all channels, both traditional and social. Perhaps we should invest more in the blue star programme, which is a brilliant initiative for our primary schools, and the European Parliament ambassador school programme for transition year students. Are there ways for us to do that? I have not found a solution. At the Committee on Culture and Education I am looking at how we can entice third level students to see the vision of what Europe has brought for us, other than through Erasmus+ because not everybody opts in to that programme. We need to ensure we bring all citizens together on that. I will connect separately with Senator Gallagher on that to see if we can figure out ways to together on that in the constituency.

On the sense of frustration with Brexit, I am interested in hearing the views of Mr. Markey and Mr. Andrews on this. In the committees on which I sit there is a sense of frustration.

That is not necessarily being placed on us and it is more of a frustration that a former member, our neighbour, is not adhering to diplomacy and democracy in the way that we have built the institutions to be. There is also the fact that this polarised vacuum conversation happens, so we see that one says one thing in the press and the other posts out a tweet to say another thing, and it is building up to a space where nothing ever happens and we continue on this track of “he said, she said”. What creates fear, and it has been mentioned a number of times, is that we are coming into the marching season and we have seen unrest. We will continue to see unrest, I believe, if we do not have players around the table to have these honest conversations. The frustration for my vision is this idea of the United Kingdom versus us, as a country or as representatives.