of EuroCommerce, the Brussels-based organisation which represents the retail, wholesale and international trade sectors in Europe. He also served on the board of directors of CIES – the Food Business Forum based in Paris as well as the American-based Food Marketing Institute. Television work In 2009, he worked with independent shops and helped them to revamp, modernise and stave off stiff competition from multi-national retailers. It aired as RTÉ's six-part television series, Feargal Quinn's Retail Therapy. A second series aired in 2011, and a third series aired in 2012. In 2011, he fronted RTÉ's Local Heroes campaign in Drogheda, County Louth which an assembled team of experts to kick-start the local economy. It aired as RTÉ 1's six-part television series, Local Heroes – A Town Fights Back. Political career Quinn was first elected as a senator in 1993 from the National University constituency and was re-elected in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2011. He was a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, the Joint Committee on Finance and Public Service and was an Oireachtas member of the National Economic and Social Forum, along with the Joint Committee on Jobs and Innovation. During his time in Seanad Éireann he tabled many amendments to government Bills and introduced 17 Private Members Bills. The most successful of those was the Construction Contracts Bill 2010 – to protect building sub-contractors which was enacted as the Construction Contracts Act 2013 and was brought into force on 23 July 2016. The proposals contained in several of his other Bills were implemented; for example, in the Irish Nationality and Citizenship and Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill 2003, Quinn sought to bring an end to the 'passports for sale' scheme. The following year, Quinn's proposal was enacted in the form of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 2004. A further example relates to the Social Welfare and Pensions (Amendment) Bill 2014 – a Senator Quinn Bill which sought to remove from Irish Water, the power to require its customers to provide their PPS numbers to the entity. Following the publication of the Bill, the Government announced that it had decided to "discontinue" the requirement for Irish Water customers to produce their PPS number. The Government subsequently amended the law to mirror Quinn's proposal. Quinn was one of the co-founders and was a driving force behind Democracy Matters – a civil society group that was formed to