An early success of ours was the appointment of a Housing Commissioner to drive forward the debate on a European Plan for Affordable Housing and to realise the European Ambition to end homelessness by 2030.
Homelessness, and in particular child and family homelessness, will be a major theme of my work over the next 12 months as I have been appointed to the new Housing Committee on behalf of the S&D group. The recommendations of this committee could be a genuine game changer for the almost 5000 Irish children who are living in emergency accommodation.
Being a member of the Employment Committee is also extremely important for Labour Party members and I am determined to ensure that any negative impact from the recent Advocate General’s ruling in relation to the Adequate Minimum Ages Directive can be mitigated. I am also focusing on the comparatively low rate of employment in Ireland for people with disabilities and also the gender pension gap, which is underreported but stands at a staggering 37%.
The status of Northern Irish EU citizens is also a project I’m working on with our sister party in the SDLP. Northern Ireland is the only jurisdiction in Europe where there are birthright EU citizens without and EU representation. We are hoping in the coming months to address that first within the S&D group and then in due course within the parliament structures also.
The overarching context for all of our work is the rise of the far right and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. There is already a full-on assault on EU legislation regarding Digital Services from Trump’s social media CEO backers and there is widespread concern as to what implications his Presidency will have for the war in Ukraine.
We cannot let the standards of decency and the rule of law slip. The EU must reassert its place as the World’s greatest ever peace project. That means standing absolutely shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and Gaza and isolating the aggressor regimes of Russia and Israel. With over 200 far right MEPs this will be the defining challenge of our age.
We defeat the far right by being better than them at the tackling the issues that face our people every day. Their housing insecurity, the bills they struggle to pay, the rights in work they need to be protected, the climate disaster that threatens their children’s future. It’s a fight we cannot afford to lose.
– Aodhán Ó Ríordáin
Dublin MEP