Twelve months ago, the screw was being turned on the Fianna Fáil MEPs to do a U-turn on their previous commitments not to vote for Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president. The body politic, the chattering classes, and Ireland’s political elite all sought to put pressure on us to go back on the promise we made to our voters. We quite rightly resisted.

Twelve months on, Ms von der Leyen’s recent utterances on the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict prove, in my opinion, that we were right to withhold our support for her re-election.

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