The right to stay for those in coastal communities and islands is meaningless without economic opportunity and when young people cannot rent, build or buy a house there. I urged the Commission to ensure necessary funding for these communities.

The EU claims to defend human rights while simultaneously praising Azerbaijan as a “valuable partner”. This hypocrisy needs to end and the EU must put pressure on Azerbaijan to release political prisoners such as Anar Mammadli and implement the Mammadli Group of judgments of the ECtHR.

Welcomed the AI Accountability Lab from Trinity College Dublin to the IMCO-LIBE Working Group on AI Act Implementatiob. Harshvardhan Pandit and Dick Blankvoort presented their research on the public summaries of training data that general-purpose AI providers must now publish under the AI Act. These summaries are meant to help rightsholders, from authors and musicians to publishers, understand what content has been used to train AI models. Enforcement of these rules began in August. Independent research like this is exactly what is needed to make sure transparency obligations are met in practice, not just on paper. AIAL's recommendations deserve serious consideration. Great to see Irish research leading the way on AI accountability

Protecting against Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online is of vital importance. However it should not be used as an excuse for mass surveillance. I questioned Minister O’Callaghan on how the Irish government would strike a balance between protecting children and respecting privacy rights.