Ireland doesn’t have the right people in the right places in the European Parliament

In a country that fancies itself as fiendishly capable in its diplomatic and political capacity internationally, we are playing a very poor game in the European Parliament. That matters because so much of practical importance in terms of the EU policy plays out there. Power in the parliament, and its power over our lives, lies in the groups who comprise the working majority. Seniority and networking determine who are committee chairs within the groups, who are the rapporteurs for their political group on the committee, and which individual committee members are responsible for specific files, or individual pieces of legislation.

This is how business is done. Unfortunately, we do not have the right people in the right places politically in the parliament. We have too few with seniority and too many of our 13 MEPs are in peripheral groups, where little real power is exercised. The influence we have is limited and seems set to be diminished further after the next European election in May 2024, when paradoxically we will have 14 MEPs, one more than in this parliament.

This placing of people politically matters in a parliament more diverse than its predecessors, where previously the Christian Democrats including Fine Gael shared power with the socialists, including Labour. Fianna Fáil missed the boat in the 1970s, when Fine Gael got into the Christian Democrats ahead of it, and as a result spent nearly 40 years on the parliamentary periphery before joining the Liberal group in 2009.

In this parliament, the Christian Democrats (now the European People’s Party or EPP) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) have joined with the Liberals (now the Renew Europe group) and the Greens to form a working majority. There is no Irish MEP in the Socialist group. Of five Fine Gael MEPs only one, Seán Kelly, has unbroken service before the last European election. The party’s senior MEP Frances Fitzgerald, who is a vice-president of the EPP and on an upward trajectory politically, is leaving politics. Her departure after one term follows another very able Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes, similarly leaving after one term in 2019. Ireland’s star player in the parliament, since Pat Cox was president 20 years ago, Mairéad McGuinness left to become Ireland’s European Commissioner. She was a vice-president of the parliament and had been seen as likely to be its next president.

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In the working majority in this parliament, we have two Fianna Fáil MEPs – Billy Kelleher and Barry Andrews – in the Renew Europe group, and two Green MEPs – Ciarán Cuffe and Grace O’Sullivan. They have made a good start in the parliament. The question, however, is whether any of them will get a second chance. Kelleher is likely best placed but the other three have a bigger fight on their hands. It took years of hard work, over several terms, for Mairéad McGuinness to reach her position of considerable influence.

Ireland lacks tenure in the parliament. The Renew group has skilfully played a kingmaker role in this parliament and done disproportionately well. The Greens have a very clear sense of purpose, and finding a majority for the Nature Restoration law was proof of their tenacity and discipline. Their MEPs vote with the group’s position in 92 per cent of votes on average, the highest of any group in the parliament. For domestic political reasons, however, opinion polls predict that we will opt for change rather than continuity.

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Four of our MEPs are in the Left group, which is the smallest alliance, having just 38 of 705 MEPs. Independents Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and Luke Ming Flanagan as well as Sinn Féin’s Chris MacManus are there. This means that 30 per cent of Ireland’s parliamentary presence is in a group that comprises just over 5 per cent of the parliament and has no capacity and little inclination to influence outcomes that are usually muddled through in the middle. In fairness, that is not what they are elected to do, and Clare Daly especially has been a very distinctive voice. The Government’s decision to move away from the triple lock on neutrality will energise the opposition.

The next parliament won’t be like the last. Politics is radicalising rightward and leftward, and that is evidenced by elections this week in the Netherlands. At home, after a bad European election in 2019, Sinn Féin goes into the next one with one seat, but is set to emerge with between three and five. That assumes it gets one seat in each of the three European constituencies and has a chance of a second in Ireland South and in Ireland Midlands North-West.

The Left group served Sinn Féin well as a soap box for opposition but is a disadvantage for a party aspiring to government in Dublin. Connectivity within a large political family in the European institutions is how influence is exercised. If Labour has no MEP again, an obvious option for Sinn Féin is to join the Socialist group. Sinn Féin’s support of Catalan independence would be one awkward issue, among others, but these could be overcome with political will. It would certainly announce, with fanfare, their arrival at the centre. The alternative is that an increased Sinn Féin presence – together with whoever survives their rise of the existing three Left MEPs – ends up comprising perhaps half our entire delegation and stuck in a parliamentary layby. That would be a deepening of continuity – not a change of any kind.