Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased to speak on Europe Day, 50 years of membership of the EU and the power of our democratic union of peoples as a force for peace, equality and prosperity. I thank the EU institutions for the great care and concern they showed for people and businesses in the Six Counties in and around the Brexit negotiations.

Europe built a peaceful union from the wreckage of two world wars. From mass death it brought new life, and through economic co-operation it ensured subsequent generations of young Europeans would not fight and die on each other’s soil.

I pay tribute to the ordinary Europeans, especially the women who saw two world wars fought mainly by their husbands, fathers and sons. The husbands who were lucky enough to come home in 1918 were then unlucky enough to see their own sons march off to war or even head off beside them just 21 years later. The people of Europe were a powerful and quiet force in the pursuit of economic co-operation that would bring opportunity, security, prosperity and, above all, peace. The women played their part in that in the fields and in the factories. They wanted a peace they hoped would last. It did last for decades, until the conflict in the Balkans and the associated genocide we watched with such horror on our television screens. Now on the borders of our Union, we have Russia’s war and invasion of Ukraine. I doubt very much that President Putin is unable to sleep at night because of the hundreds of thousands of his own people he is sending into battle. He is certainly not tossing and turning because of the terror and death he has inflicted on the people of Ukraine. On Europe Day here on our small island, where we have made peace and, more important, keep that peace, we can take time and care to consider suffering, fear and death that are not political but simply human. It is in that context – the context of our shared humanity in this world, which is getting smaller by the day – that I would like to see Ireland as a State commit to peace, to brokering peace and to keeping peace wherever it is needed in the world.

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