Ireland likes to tell itself a comforting story. It is the land of opportunity. The Celtic Tiger. The European success story. The “good European” that faithfully follows the rules while others make trouble.
But that’s not the Ireland I recognise when I go home. My father is 91 years old. Every winter he worries about turning on the heating because the levies added in the name of climate policy have driven the cost of heating his home through the roof. At his age, he shouldn’t have to choose between warmth and his bank balance.
My brother thinks twice before filling his car because another increase in fuel costs means another hit to the household budget. He needs that car to get to work. Politicians talk about behavioural change. Working people call it getting by.
One of my nieces sits in a classroom where many children no longer speak English as their first language. Whatever your views on immigration, anyone who pretends this presents no challenge to teachers or to social cohesion simply isn’t living in the real world.
Other nieces are still living with their mother well into adulthood because buying a home has become little more than a fantasy. Renting isn’t much easier. They did everything they were told to do. They studied, worked hard and played by the rules. Yet the most basic marker of adulthood, a place to call your own, has drifted further out of reach.
A close friend, a cattle farmer in County Cork, fears that the political class that once encouraged farmers to expand now views them as little more than carbon emitters whose livelihoods are expendable in pursuit of emissions targets.
Others I know have been casually dismissed as racists simply for expressing concerns about the pace of immigration or the capacity of communities to absorb it.
These aren’t isolated stories. They are becoming ordinary stories.
And yet the politicians responsible for presiding over these failures are today assuming one of the most influential positions in European politics: the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It is the eighth time Ireland has held the six-month rotating role, and its first since 2013. That should concern everyone in Europe.
Our new MCC Brussels briefing, The Model Member State: Ireland’s EU Council Presidency, argues that Ireland’s governing establishment has spent decades cultivating its reputation as Brussels’ model pupil. When difficult choices arise, successive governments have shown a remarkable instinct to align themselves with the priorities of the European Commission, even where those priorities increasingly diverge from the concerns of ordinary Irish citizens.
The Presidency is often presented as an administrative role. It is anything but.
The country holding the Presidency cannot simply dictate EU policy, but it can decide which legislative files are prioritised, how negotiations are framed, where compromises are sought and which initiatives quietly gather momentum behind closed doors. Much of the real business of the European Union never reaches the evening news.
And that is precisely why this Presidency matters.
Europe today faces profound challenges. Economic growth has stalled. Industrial competitiveness is under sustained pressure. Energy remains expensive. Farmers across the continent have taken to the streets. Young Europeans increasingly doubt they will enjoy the prosperity their parents took for granted.
One might expect Europe’s political class to devote every ounce of its energy to reversing this decline. Instead, Ireland appears ready to devote much of its Presidency to advancing what has become Brussels’ ever-expanding “values agenda”.
That includes discussions around the Commission’s proposed AgoraEU programme, potentially worth up to €10 billion, which our report argues risks creating a taxpayer-funded ecosystem of NGOs and media organisations that reinforce the prevailing Brussels consensus rather than encouraging genuine pluralism.
It includes support for EU-wide age verification systems linked to government-issued identity credentials, measures that raise profound questions about privacy and anonymous participation online.
It includes continued pressure on candidate countries to reshape family law and gender recognition policies as part of the accession process, often on issues that remain deeply contested within those societies themselves.
At the very moment Europe needs less bureaucracy, more competitiveness and a renewed focus on prosperity, too much of Brussels remains preoccupied with regulating speech, policing opinion and extending its reach ever further into questions that should properly remain matters for democratic debate within member states.
Meanwhile, the truly consequential decisions receive comparatively little attention. Ireland will oversee negotiations on the next seven-year EU budget, the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework. Those talks could bring significant reductions in agricultural support while layering yet more environmental conditions onto farmers already struggling under the weight of regulation.
They also include proposals for new EU-level corporate levies that could undermine one of the foundations of Ireland’s own economic success. These are not peripheral issues, they go to the heart of Europe’s future prosperity.
The great irony is that Ireland itself has become a case study in what happens when political elites become more concerned with earning applause in Brussels than solving problems at home. Housing has become unaffordable, while energy costs continue to rise and infrastructure struggles to keep pace with population growth.
Farmers increasingly feel under siege, public confidence in immigration policy has fractured and freedom of expression has become more contested than at any point in modern Irish history. Yet the instinct of the governing class remains remarkably consistent: double down, announce another initiative, adopt another directive, demonstrate once again that Ireland is the “good European”.
Being a good European should never mean being a bad government.
The Irish Presidency represents an opportunity. Ireland could use its influence to champion competitiveness instead of bureaucracy, democratic accountability instead of technocratic centralisation, prosperity instead of permanent regulation. Whether it does so remains to be seen.
The real test of this Presidency will not be whether Brussels insiders congratulate Ireland for efficiently chairing meetings or skilfully managing legislative timetables. It will be whether Ireland remembers who government is ultimately supposed to serve.
If the answer is Brussels before its own people, Europe should pay close attention, because what Ireland exports over the next six months may not simply be competent administration. It may be a governing philosophy that much of Europe can no longer afford.
