“I have to say, I enjoy doing that”, said Luke Ming Flanagan as he banged the gavel on the table.

“According to our rules of procedure, I shall be acting as the provisional chair for the first agenda item. And, that’s a great honour to me. I come from Ireland. Three of my family were born in London, and three of us were born in Ireland. It’s like half my town. So we have a massive connection as EU citizens to people in the UK. In fact, some of them are in my family.”

Since the outgoing chair and vice-chair were unavailable, it fell to the longest serving member to chair the opening session of the Delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.

Luke Ming Flanagan has been a member of the European Parliament since 2014.

French MEP, and former Italian Europe Minister, Sandro Gozi was subsequently elected delegation chair unopposed.

As an ordinary member, Flanagan is unlikely to get another chance to bang the gavel in the Brexit delegation. He is one of six Irish MEPs on that delegation.

However, Luke Ming Flanagan has been elected 1st Vice Chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for relations with Mercosur.

The EU has been trying to finalise a deal with the south American trading block for years. Flanagan opposes a EU-Mercosur agreement which he believes would be particularly bad for Irish farmers.